A couple of months ago I reported a problem trying to use Apache and perl for web development. The problem was that all attempts to use any kind of a socket failed.
I just got this note from Eric Davis. He's worked out the problem and a work-around. He asked me to forward this to the mailing list as he is not subscribed. dar ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 12:18:29 -0700 From: Eric Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Fix: Socket problem w/ apache & perl cgi Hi David, I came across your post on the Cygwin mailing list about Perl/CGI not working under Apache. http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-07/msg01080.html Like you, I was also pulling my hair out on this and figured out the problem/solution. I verified that the problem exists and the solution works for both the Apache and Boa web servers. The following CGI script works from the bash prompt but fails as a CGI program (name - proto_real.cgi): #!/usr/bin/perl print "Content-Type: text/html\r\n\r\n<html>\n<head></head>\n<body>\n"; my $num; (undef, undef, $num) = getprotobyname('tcp'); if ($num) { print "OK: tcp($num)<br/>\n"; } else { print "ERROR<br/>\n"; } print "</body>\n</html>\n"; The problem has to do with (good) Web servers removing all the existing environment variables before a fork and exec of the CGI script, and of course building new environment variables containing all the CGI data. For some reason, Cygwin requires the SYSTEMROOT environment variable to be set for things to work properly. The fix (i.e. without modifying any Web server CGI code) is to create a wrapper around the real script. This wrapper simply sets the SYSTEMROOT environment variable and executes the real script. Here is an example wrapper (name - proto.cgi): #!/usr/bin/perl $ENV{SYSTEMROOT} = "C:\\WINDOWS"; exec 'proto_real.cgi' That should do it. With this, I can now write CGI code using Apache or Boa under the Cygwin environment. So using DBI, DBD::mysql, DBD::mysqlPP, IO::Socket, etc, now works as expected... all of which I have used/tested under Cygwin/Apache/Perl/CGI. Lastly, could you please post this as a reply to your original question on the Cygwin mailing list. I'm not on that list and don't want to subscribe just to post this. Good luck! - eric -- Eric Davis http://www.foobargeek.com -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
