Premature Script Failure

Alan Powell · 04-14-2004, 09:44 AM

Hello all, can you help please? I am a newbie imho although on a steep learning curve

I have checked various references and websources

but still feel I could benefit from some advice.

I am ditching using a win2K server for all sorts of reasons and am migrating to Linux RH9. My server is built and seems to work ok when I have a default site to serve with Apache 2.0.40 for html and php. I fully updated the build with synaptic.

Following difficulty with Error 500 and premature script failure with a name based virtual host set up, I reverted to a standard single hostname set up and the NSA standard httpd.conf written by Rob McCool. I have set my group and ownership of directory and files to apache for /var/www/<all subs and content>. The permissions are set so that the directories are readable and executable by everybody (rwxr-xr-x) and the files are chmodded to 0755 (-rwxr-xr-x) in the /var/www/cgi-bin directory.

The log error purely mentions the premature failure of the scripts irrespectively whether they are .pl or .cgi

My questions are: -

Should my webserved directories and contents have group and ownership ideally set to apache?
My files need to have chmod 0755 <y/n>?
The error message indicates that the files are being accessed - the error is
filesystem access rather than httpd server based?

Is there a standard test setup that someone can share with me perhaps?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Alan

david_ross · 04-14-2004, 02:12 PM

Your scripts will need to be readable an accessable by the user apache. For more information about permissions see:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Permissions

You could have permissions of 500 if the owner is apache.

To find out why you are getting these errors look for entries in your error_log file about the time that you accessed the cgi script. if you are unsure then post the message from the log file.

Alan Powell · 04-15-2004, 04:57 AM

Thanks for that David. I reviewed the reference and understand setting the permissions and the reasons why.

I have managed now to establish the following and would like further help.

I have checked that my httpd.conf is loading the cgi module.

For the following test script: -

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

print "<html><head>\n";
print "<title>hello world test</title></head>\n";
print "<body bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" text=\"#000000\" link=\"#FF0000\" vlink=\"#800000\">\n";
print "<h1>hello world!</h1>\n";
print "</body></html>\n";

I get this exact message from the error log: -

[Thu Apr 15 10:28:28 2004] [error] [client 192.168.0.12] Premature end of script headers: helloworld.pl, referer: http://192.168.0.31/index.php

Here are my environment settings: -

BASH=/bin/bash
BASH_ENV=/root/.bashrc
BASH_VERSINFO=([0]="2" [1]="05b" [2]="0" [3]="1" [4]="release" [5]="i386-redhat-linux-gnu")
BASH_VERSION='2.05b.0(1)-release'
COLORS=/etc/DIR_COLORS.xterm
COLORTERM=gnome-terminal
COLUMNS=80
DIRSTACK=()
DISPLAY=:0.0
EUID=0
GDMSESSION=Default
GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=Default
GROUPS=()
GTK_RC_FILES=/etc/gtk/gtkrc:/root/.gtkrc-1.2-gnome2
G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1
HISTFILE=/root/.bash_history
HISTFILESIZE=1000
HISTSIZE=1000
HOME=/root
HOSTNAME=development
HOSTTYPE=i386
IFS=$' \t\n'
INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LESSOPEN='|/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh %s'
LINES=24
LOGNAME=root
LS_COLORS='no=00:----etc --- tif=00;35:'
MACHTYPE=i386-redhat-linux-gnu
MAIL=/var/spool/mail/root
MAILCHECK=60
OLDPWD=/var/www
OPTERR=1
OPTIND=1
OSTYPE=linux-gnu
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin
PIPESTATUS=([0]="0")
PPID=2488
PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}\007"'
PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '
PS2='> '
PS4='+ '
PWD=/var/www/cgi-bin
QTDIR=/usr/lib/qt-3.1
SESSION_MANAGER=local/development:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1949
SHELL=/bin/bash
SHELLOPTS=braceexpand:emacs:hashall:histexpand:history:interactive-comments:monitor
SHLVL=2
SSH_AGENT_PID=2007
SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/libexec/openssh/gnome-ssh-askpass
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-XXqPl0Ev/agent.1949
SUPPORTED=en_GB.UTF-8:en_GB:en
TERM=xterm
UID=0
USER=root
USERNAME=root
WINDOWID=46137608
XAUTHORITY=/root/.Xauthority
XMODIFIERS=@im=none
_=
i=/etc/profile.d/which-2.sh

The error code does not change if I comment the #!/usr/bin/perl line out!!!

So this says to me that the script is found but not even opening. Here is the listing of the directory permissions and its contents: -

in /
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:43 var

in/var
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:40 www

in/var/www
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:39 cgi-bin

in /var/www/cgi-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 apache apache 385 Apr 14 14:00 helloworld.pl

I still cannot see what is wrong and am confused since I can run a simple perl file.pl test and get command line output irrespective of whether I state /usr/bin/perl file.pl or without the path.

Anything you can spot please?

Thanks in advance

david_ross · 04-15-2004, 01:00 PM

The first thing to check is that perl in that location:
whereis perl

If it is there then the only thing I think you need to add is an exit statement:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

print "<html><head>\n";
print "<title>hello world test</title></head>\n";
print "<body bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" text=\"#000000\" link=\"#FF0000\" vlink=\"#800000\">\n";
print "<h1>hello world!</h1>\n";
print "</body></html>\n";
exit;

To help tidy the code up you may want to use:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print <<"EOF";
Content-type: text/html

<html>
 <head>
  <title>hello world test</title>
 </head>
 <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#FF0000" vlink="#800000">
  <h1>hello world!</h1>
 </body>
</html>
EOF

exit;