I have little hello world cgi script that I can't get to work.
If I place the script file within a real directory within my virtual host root directory the script works just fine.
Now I read that for security reason I should place my scripts within a directory external to my virtual's host directory, so I pointed all the ScriptAlias and <directory> permissions to this new external directory and gave the user execution permissions, but now it does not work. Is it there anythning else I'm missing?

This is the configuration that does not work:

ScriptAlias /awstats/ "/usr/local/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/"

<Directory "/usr/local/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/">
Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script pl cgi
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

If I replace this config for the following one, everything works just fine:

ScriptAlias /awstats/ "/var/www/apache2-default/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/"

<Directory "/var/www/apache2-default/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/">
Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script pl cgi
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Permissions to the directories and scrits are set to the same. Am I missing something in httpd.conf or somewhere else that prevent my nobody apache user to execute scripts located in directories external to apache's www directory?? thanks is advance guys.

I need help with this, moving it on top!!!

Does userid "nobody" have read and execute permissions on all directories down the path to your new script directory? (Not just the final directory "cgi-bin", but each directory further up the PATH from that as well.)

What does Apache's error log tell you when you try to execute things from your new script directory? Possible location of this logfile (may be different on your system): /var/log/apache2/error.log

Tells me that I have no permission to execute. But no, I just gave X permission to the current cgi-directory, I did not gave X permission to the whole path. Then if I want to execute isuck.pl located in /usr/awstats/cgi, I need X permissions for the apache user in /cgi and also in /awstats? Isn't enough to give X permisssions in /usr/awstats/cgi? Thanks for your help.

This would be a problem. You need to be able to read (optional) and execute ALL directories in the chain down to your executable cgi file. Technically, only execute is required on the path directories. Read on directories usually runs lock-step with execute, but it doesn't have to. There may be some minor security gain in some situations to allow execute but not read on directories. This is standard Unix/Linux permission stuff - nothing special here in regards to Apache.

I just noticed that this is a duplicate thread (O.P. - you shouldn't do this, it confuses things).

Discussion should probably continue over on the other thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=469680

Yes, it is duplicated, happened that I got no answer to my post from yesterday and I found another one discussing the same issue posted today. Sorry about that.