Can I use CGI programs?

All accounts include the ability to run the "standard" CGI scripts that are pre-installed on the system, as well as custom user-written CGIs.

There are several scripts available under http://www.lstar.net/cgi-sys/. Note that /cgi-sys/ will always reach the system CGI directory even with a Virtual Domain.

Documentation for the system CGI has its own section in the Support Forum.

You can reach these scripts directly at http://www.lstar.net/cgi-sys/, or through the alias /cgi-sys/, which will work from within any account.

You can place them anywhere, as long as they have the ".cgi" extension. If you are using a domain account, you can place executable files in your cgi-bin directory - these are not extension-dependent.

1. The script must be marked as executable. This is done with chmod. If you are logged in via Telnet, use chmod 755 scriptname.cgi. If you are logged in via FTP, use quote site exec chmod 755 scriptname.cgi in the appropriate directory. This may not work well with all FTP clients; if you have trouble, please log in via Telnet to change the permissions manually.

Errors from CGI programs normally go into the Web server's error logs, or sometimes they go nowhere at all. They do not normally go to your Web browser. The error messages sent to the browser in the case of failure of a CGI script are very generic and distinctly unhelpful.

We do not make error logs available for users because they are quite large and almost entirely useless. For further details on how to debug your scripts, please visit our How-To Guide on the subject.