[Solved] Help with setting up thttpd and CGI

[tygre]

Dear all!

I want to use my Amiga 1200 + Blizzard 1240T as a Web server. I found thttpd to be a nice and lightweigt Web server. Now, I would like to enhance my site with some CGI scripts but I cannot get thttpd to serve them

Here is my config, thttpd.conf:
host=192.168.0.48
port=80
dir=/T/Web
user=nobody
cgipat=**.cgi
logfile=/T/thttpd.log
pidfile=/T/thttpd.pid

and here is how I run thttpd:
thttpd -C thttpd.conf -D

and in "T:Web/" I have a directory "cgi-bin", which contains the command redirect (valid Amiga executable provided along with thttpd) that I renamed redirect.cgi.

When I browse the URL http://192.168.0.48/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi, my Web browser offers me to download the file redirect.cgi: it is not executed by the Amiga from thttpd... Am I nuts or what? If I omit the directive "cgipat", then thttpd complains that it cannot find redirect.cgi, as it should be. So it seems to me that thttpd finds the directory, finds the file but for some reason does not want to execute it...

Thanks in advance!
Yann

[tygre]

Dear all!

Out of desperation , I decided to compile THTTPd by myself to understand what was going on... and I found some answers!

Originally Posted by tygre

Dear all!
Here is my config, thttpd.conf:
host=192.168.0.48
port=80
dir=/T/Web
user=nobody
cgipat=**.cgi
logfile=/T/thttpd.log
pidfile=/T/thttpd.pid

The problem did not come from my config. file, although I could replace "**.cgi" by "/cgi-bin/*.cgi".

Originally Posted by tygre

When I browse the URL http://192.168.0.48/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi, my Web browser offers me to download the file redirect.cgi: it is not executed by the Amiga from thttpd... Am I nuts or what? If I omit the directive "cgipat", then thttpd complains that it cannot find redirect.cgi, as it should be. So it seems to me that thttpd finds the directory, finds the file but for some reason does not want to execute it...

The CGI script "redirect.cgi" wasn't served simply because it was not executable! Under "sh" (from the excellent Geek Gadgets), "ls -l" would show the file a being not executable, typically "-rwx------". Using "chmod 755 redirect.cgi", the script is being executed... even though it never returns

I'll keep you posted!
Cheers!
Tygre

[tygre]

Dear all!

I spent sometime on THTTPd and finally found reasons to my problems and some solutions:

1. Why POST'ed data were truncated in THTTPd v2.21 in an attempt to use THTTPd to run a Wiki on my Amiga.
2. Why CGI scripts did not work with THTTPd v2.25 in an attempt to call the PHP interpreter as a CGI.

To make a long story short, thanks to lots of help and resources over the Internet , I managed to recompile both THTTPd v2.21 and 2.25, to change the limit of POST'ed data in THTTPd v2.21 (SAPI_POST_BLOCK_SIZE), and to "fork" CGI processes in THTTPd v2.25 (IXEmul and ix_vfork()).



Now, my Wiki should just work as desired! I will post more explanations later...


Cheers!
Tygre

[tygre]

Hi all!

Here are some more explanations about the (several) problems that I met.

First of all, only THTTPd v2.21bP22 has been "officially" adapted to call PHP (v4.2.3). This version of THTTPd is therefore the best to start with for serving Web pages from an Amiga. However, the version available on Aminet had been recompiled "as is" and the size of the blocks of data allowed to be exchanged between THTTPd and PHP was just too small: 4,000 bytes. To change this number, SAPI_POST_BLOCK_SIZE, PHP (and thus THTTPd) must be recompiled.

Second of all, cross-compiling such programs on Windows/Cygwin is a pain for two main reasons: GCC generate sometimes buggy code, as in the case of variadic parameters, which makes it difficult to pinpoint and solve memory problems. Recompiling/porting such programs to the Amiga requires using the IXEmul library, which cannot offer all the support needed to seamlessly recompile UNIX programs for the Amiga, such as fork().

Third, classic Amiga are getting old despite still being young and some memory problems can creep up not from the software side but from the hardware side, due to heat, capacitors... These problems are very, very hard to pinpoint but nothing that a couple of fans and a open case and, eventually, some new capacitors cannot fix...

All in all, after some hours of compiling, debugging, modifying, reverting changes, and crying for help , I was able to recompile a working version of THTTPd v2.21bP22 + PHP v4.2.3 while changing the SAPI_POST_BLOCK_SIZE to 65,536 bytes to allow THTTPd and PHP to happily work together. I tried to document all this effort on a Wiki that is running on top of the very THTTPd that I recompiled. Any question or suggestion are welcome and thank you all for your help!

Cheers!
Tygre

PS. Could a kind moderator mark the title of this thread as "solved"?