How to Add Perl CGI Script Support to Your Apache Web Server on Windows

Configuring Apache 1. Running Perl Scripts in a CGI directory You can configure Apache to treat any file in a particular directory as a CGI script. Typically, web hosts call such a directory the cgi-bin directory. To configure Apache to treat a particular directory as your script directory, search for the following line in your "httpd.conf" file. For those who have forgotten where the "httpd.conf" file can be found, try looking for it in the "conf" directory of your Apache folder. If you used the default directories supplied by the Apache installer, it would be "c:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache/conf/httpd.conf".

1. ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache/cgi-bin/"
   

If it has been commented out, that is, if there is a hash mark ("#") before the line, remove the hash character to enable it. If it has not been commented out, it means that your Apache is already configured to run CGI scripts in that directory. You can change the directory to another directory if you wish. 2. Running CGI scripts anywhere in your domain If you don't want to be restricted to running CGI scripts within the ScriptAlias directory in your domain, and want CGI scripts to run anywhere in your domain, add the following line to your "httpd.conf" file.
You can add it yourself manually, but since the default httpd.conf file that is supplied by Apache already comes with that line commented out, the simplest thing would be to search for that string in your existing file, and remove the preceding comment character, that is, remove the "#". If you want the .pl extension recognised as a CGI script as well, simply append the extension to the list, as follows:

1. AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl

Next, search for the line that says " in the file. It should look something like this:

1. <Directory />
2.   Options FollowSymLinks
3.   AllowOverride None
4. </Directory> 

Add "+ExecCGI" to the options list. The line now looks like this:

1. Options FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

3. Making a CGI Script Your Default Page If you want to make your CGI script execute as the default page for a directory, you have to add another line to the Apache configuration file (httpd.conf). Simply search for the line in the file that begins with a "DirectoryIndex" and add "index.cgi" to the list of files on that line. For example, if the line used to be:

1. DirectoryIndex index.html
   

change it to

1. DirectoryIndex index.cgi index.html 

The next time you access "http://localhost/" or "http://localhost/directory/" without any filename specified, Apache will run "index.cgi" if available or deliver "index.html" if it cannot find "index.cgi". If you have both "index.cgi" and "index.html" in the directory, "index.cgi" is used since it's listed first.

Modifying Your CGI Script

As it stands, if your CGI script is a Windows executable, it would be executed by Apache correctly. However, if it's a script that relies on an interpreter such as Perl or Python, you will have to modify the first line of the script.

Your Perl script will typically contain an initial line of

1. #!/usr/bin/perl

or some such thing. This tells a Unix-based kernel to look for an interpreter at the path "/usr/bin/perl" and invoke it to interpret the instructions in the file.

Since the script now runs on Windows, and it is unlikely that you installed your Perl interpreter in a /usr/bin directory, you will need to change that first line to point to the real location of your Perl interpreter.

For example, on my Windows box, I have to change the first line of my Perl scripts to:

1. #!c:/program files/perl/bin/perl.exe 

Of course if you are using other scripting languages, you will have to set that initial line to point to whatever interpreter you are using.