Kevin wrote: >I'm having trouble setting up M2web. I know nothing >about cgi, so bear with me please.
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. The essence of it is that Apache or any web server supporting CGI can be configured to associate a script file, such as m2web.cgi, with certain URL's and to run the script if file permissions are set appropriately. A CGI script is intended to start up a process that will respond to a single web request and quit. When the CGI process starts up, it will find all of the parameters that determine its context defined in a standard set of environment variables. It may have additional input to be read from its standard input when the type of request is POST or PUT. A CGI process communicates back to the web server and the web client by writing to its standard output. The m2web.cgi script is intended to start up a MUMPS job running routine ^htCGI. The CGI environment variables and other input will be brought into MUMPS variables prior to calling any application specific routines so that most applications can be coded to work simply with data and no device handling. Application programs have many options for how to return a response. The simplest is to set the text to be returned into the variable htReturn. There are many ways to enable CGI. It might be helpful to review the documentation at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/ and specifically at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/cgi.html and similarly for Apache2 http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/howto/cgi.html >I think I have just plain Apache. This is fine but not quite as easy to configure. I prefer Apache2 because the setup is more modular and you don't have to touch the main configuration file to define a virtual host or to enable CGI or SSL, etc. I prefer to define a virtual host for vista so you can take over the top level URI's but leave the default apache configuration untouched. If you don't define a virtual host for vista, I think the best way to run M2Web is by enabling CGI from user directories. This would allow Apache to run the CGI with the identity of the user who owns the script rather than running as the normal apache user. >I found these (apparently older) instructions: >http://vista.vmth.ucdavis.edu/notebook/index/12.html >That seem target at plain Apache. Yes, they are older. You might get some ideas from the descriptive text, but most of the details of the older instructions don't apply to the newer package. Very little is actually required. You need to define a ScriptAlias for m2web.cgi or place it in a directory, such as cgi-bin, for which a ScriptAlias has been defined. You need to also define an Alias for /icon/ so that icons included with M2Web can be found. You could use the aliases from the new m2web-vista-site file as examples. >But these describe a different directory setup. I know you already have your own configuration of directories. You could put the M2Web files in there if you want. I would keep them in a separate subdirectory to facilitate updates. The essential thing is that Apache must be able to find and execute the m2web script and that script must be able to run GT.M with your routines and globals and with compatible permissions. >Also, I'm not clear about what linux users I need to >set up. It looks in some of the instructions that >there is a vista user. Other places I think I saw a >m2web user. Are those required. What users and groups do you want to be able to access your MUMPS globals and routines? Those are the only ones required. >I know I'm being slow, but if someone could walk me >through this I'd appreciate it. Ok, continued in another email response... Also, I have a newer version of m2web.cgi at http://vista.vmth.ucdavis.edu/files/w/m2web-vista-cgi The main difference is at the bottom where it checks for existence of environment variable HTTP_HOST to determine how it will start GT.M. This makes it easy to test the correctness of the GT.M M2Web configuration in direct mode. >Thanks >Kevin --------------------------------------- Jim Self Systems Architect, Lead Developer VMTH Computer Services, UC Davis (http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/us/jaself) ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: NEC IT Guy Games. Get your fingers limbered up and give it your best shot. 4 great events, 4 opportunities to win big! Highest score wins.NEC IT Guy Games. Play to win an NEC 61 plasma display. Visit http://www.necitguy.com/?r=20 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
