I am having a lot of difficulty configuring httpd.conf to handle CGI, specifically having it work with /home/*/public_html/cgi-bin/. I am using RedHat 9.0.

I keep getting the error: "Premature end of script headers:"

I have checked the Apache FAQ and documentation and several forums, but none of the listed solutions have worked.

My httpd.conf (relevant part) file looks like this:

---code

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"

<IfModule mod_cgid.c>
Scriptsock run/httpd.cgid
</IfModule>

<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

<Directory "/home/*/public_html">
AllowOverride None
Options None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

AddHandler cgi-script cgi pl
<Directory "/home/*/public_html/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

---end code

I am not using "SetHandler cgi-script" because I want to be able to put .html files in that directory, when I did have it in I still got the same error.

I am testing with the following perl script:

--- code

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello, World.";

--- end code

The oddest thing is that in the /var/www/cgi-bin directory, this script actually works. But in my cgi-bin directory (~/public_html/cgi-bin) I get the header error. In addition, a script that I wrote a year ago (on different server - I changed the shebang line when I moved to this server) won't work in either directory.

Permissions to directories and files are all set to 655.

I am at a loss as to what the problem may be and hope I can get some suggestions.

Thanks.

Many headaches later, I have found a solution.

I had to re-install my Linux (using RedHat Enterprise now). The relevance will become evident below.

Several posts suggest /usr/sbin/suexec may be the culprit. For Enterprise, it apparently is. I moved it out of its directory, restarted the webserver, and voila! my troubles were over! (Just with a simple script, not sure about more complex ones)

I am 100% positive that suexec did NOT exist in my copy of RedHat 9.0, so I am not sure what the problem there was. Maybe it did exist and I never noticed.

Seems like a rather foolish idea to have suexec if it causes such a huge problem.

I ran into this too with FC3... I had issues with accessing nagios cgi's in apache. I disabled SELinux in Security Settings and everything is working fine in now.