http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=410063


in reply to CGI index as text

It depends on their Apache setup. If you drop a .htaccess file into your webroot that looks like this:

DirectoryIndex index.cgi AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl Options +ExecCGI

Then add an index.cgi that looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl print "Content-Type: text/html\n\nHello World!\n";

and finally chmod 755 it....chmod 755 /blah/public_html/index.cgi

You should see the famous phrase if .htaccess of the default Apache httpd.conf directives is allowed. A 500 Internal Server Error or 403 Forbidden also probably indicates it is working but you have a typo or forgot the chmod respectively. If you see your index.htm(l) instead then the .htaccess override of the DirectoryIndex is not working.

You may also like to add:

ErrorLog /some/path/logs/error_log CustomLog /some/path/logs/access_log common

To your .htaccess. This gives you a private set of error logs if you don't already have them. Make sure the path exists though and is writable by Apache. It gets upset if it can't write logs.....

cheers

tachyon