Question
Ubuntu 14.04/Serverpilot running CGI Scripts
Got an odd Serverpilot query.
My client wants FTP access to a subfolder on the site - loathe to let them have full access so created a user with access to /home/FTPUSER and symlink to this from my /srv/users/serverpilot/apps/APPNAME/public/ folder so that they cannot access the system files for their main site, etc from a script.
PHP files from this folder are working fine but the client now wants to be able to run CGI/Perl scripts from this folder. I have tried following instructions at https://serverpilot.io/community/articles/how-to-create-a-cgi-bin-directory.html (updating the document root) but can’t get CGI or Perl scripts to run, instead being returned as plain text.
Any thoughts?
Cole
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You might need to have that custom user’s home directory somewhere under
/srv/usersdue to that being the suexec root in ServerPilot’s Apache build. That is, maybe Apache is refusing to execute these scripts for security reasons because they’re under/home/CUSTOMUSER.Alternatively, you could give your client access to a specific subdirectory by running a very simple FTP server. Take a look at this article (just added yesterday):
https://serverpilot.io/community/articles/how-to-run-a-simple-ftp-server.html
As a former Perl/CGI developer this brings back memories 😃
It’s been a while since I’ve set up apache to run Perl scripts but there are three primary things you’ll need to do:
1.) Make sure that mod_perl is installed and enabled:
2.) In your configuration make sure that the directory where the scripts will be has the
ExecCGIoption.3.) Make sure the scripts have execute permissions for the www-data user that apache runs under.