Making Perl/CGI work on "localhost".
 

On Mandrake 9.0, I have Apache 1.3 set up such that http://localhost points to /var/www/html and renders it just as if I were surfing the web. However, I can't get it to execute Perl scripts. If I put the script in /var/www/cgi-bin, I get the "forbidden" message. If I put the script in the /var/www/html directory along with a .htaccess file specifying that CGI scripts are allowed in that directory, I get the "Method not allowed" message. I have set the execute permission on the script. I have read the Apache documentation and the httpd.conf file. All directives look to be in order to set up /var/www/cgi-bin as the global CGI directory and to also allow local Perl scripts using .htaccess files. What now needs to be done? Please advise.

If you are getting a forbidden message then make sure that the user your webserver is running as has read an execute permissions on your script and directory.

You may also get further information from the apache error_log file.

Thanks. It all works now. The missing link that needed to be updated was the commonhttpd.conf file.