[This posting doesn't like url's, so I've replaced the url's below with "URL"]

Hi, I've been tearing my hair out on this one for ages. There was a similar posting about this, but I tried it all and just got more confused.

I'm using Apache 9 with Webmin. I'm trying to allow cgi scripts to run on virtual servers. I've created this in Apache directives file (httpd.conf):

DocumentRoot /home/sites/lho/web
ServerName lho.com
ServerAlias lho.com URL
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/sites/web/lho/cgi-bin/

Then I tried to edit the entire httpd.conf file:

#ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/home/sites/"

(I also tried commenting out the scriptalias directive, btw.)

I also ensured that there was the directive:

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

and noticed there was a 'default' setting:

<Directory />
# Options FollowSymLinks
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

I then tried simply to display an index.html file in the cgi-bin directory and got "object not found", but if I changed the name to cgibin and typed in "URL/cgibin" then the file was displayed (!!??)

When I tried to execute "URL/cgi-bin/hello.cgi" I got "server error: premature end of script headers", but when I tried it with cgibin/hello.cgi I got "access forbidden". I also get this message if I comment out all the ScriptAlias directives.

hello.cgi:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "content-type:text/html\n\nHello World!";
exit;

The cgi-bin (cgibin) directory has 777 permissions, the cgi file has 755 permissions.

What am I missing?

Many thanks...

"/home/sites" seems like a rather obscure location to keep it in. this would be reserved for the "sites" user and would have inherited permissions for that user and usually a "sites" group only. Using the "/var/www/cgi-bin" would make the most sense from a permissions standpoint.

You are probably right about the directory structure. The idea was to give each website its own virtual server space with separate permissions. I wouldn't want to give users access to a global directory like /var/www/cgi-bin and not sure how to get round that. They could interfere with scripts belonging to other users/sites.

What would I have to do to give each virtual server the correct set of permissions in the conf file?

I am not sure what need you have to meet in terms of permissions. Outsiders only have read permission to system directories anyway. And file location is all in your scripting. That's all the help I can be I'm afraid.