Web Site Design and Maintenance

Windows IIS cgi-bin setup

How to configure a cgi-bin on Windows’ IIS

Introduction Top of Page This document assumes that the target web site already exists in D.N.S. and that active perl has already been installed on the system.  The purpose of the document is to make sure the cgi-bin directory is set up correctly in order to add search features for the target web site.

Procedure Top of Page 1. In your file system, create the location where your web site contents will reside. As an example let’s assume we are going to put all web site contents under: c:\home\www.mysite.com\www 2. Next, create the cgi-bin where all your C.G.I. Scripts will be residing. For our example web site from (1), we create the cgi-bin under:    c:\home\www.mysite.com\www\cgi-bin

3. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) manager. It can be found at: Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Or Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager 4. Navigate to the Web Sites directory (by expanding the target computer icon) 5. Highlight the Web Sites directory and right click.  Select New -> Web Site. . .

7. Enter a description and hit next (The description will be the name displayed for the web site about to be created)

8. Enter/select the correct network I.P. for the site and hit next.

9. Browse to the location where the web pages will be found and select it. Then make sure the correct path is showing on the path field after selecting the path and click next. For our example we would select: c:\home\www.mysite.com\www

10. Select the desired permission for the web site. The default permissions are usually fine. However, make sure the “Execute” permission is not selected for the web site. Then hit next.

11. Hit finish 12. Now you will see that the name you gave in the description for the new web site shows in the web site tree. Expand the new web site node. In the expanded node, a bin directory should be visible. 13. Select the new node and right click on it. 14. Select New -> Virtual Directory and hit next after reading the welcome window.

15. In the Alias box enter cgi-bin, and hit next.

16. In the next step, select the location of the cgi-bin using the browse button. For our example we would select: c:\home\www.mysite.com\www\cgi-bin\ 17. Verify the correct path has been entered, and click next.

18. In the next window, give the cgi-bin the “Execute” permission, and click next.

Hit finish and you probably will notice there are 2 cgi-bin nodes shown in the tree (a file system directory and a virtual directory) 19. Select your web site node, and right click. 20. Select refresh and only the virtual directory will be displayed.

Now we need to verify the cgi-bin has been set correctly. Right click on the virtual cgi-bin directory and select “properties”. In the “local path” field verify the file system path shown reflects the previously selected cgi-bin path. If it has the correct path, then we can proceed to test the cgi-bin directory. Otherwise, remove the web site node you just created, and repeat the process again.

Testing Top of Page Now we can test the current cgi-bin setup to verify whether search features can be added to the web site. Please follow the following steps: 1. Download a test script designed to test the current setup from here and save it in the cgi-bin of the web site. The test script is named cgi-test_pl.txt. So, for our example, the script will be saved at: c:\home\www.mysite.com\www\cgi-bin\ 2. Rename the cgi-test_pl.txt script to cgi-test.pl

3. Open a browser and execute the cgi-test.pl If the test script succeeds, then it will display a green success string on the browser, and the web site should be ready to go. Otherwise, an error indicating what failed will be displayed with some possible reasons why the script may have failed. If the script fails, then the administrator is responsible to track down the problem.