The 500 error message can be caused by many things. Links is setup to (hopefully) trap the majority of them (syntax errors, typos, etc) but it cannot catch everything.
The error you are getting from the command line cannot be solved because admin.cgi will not run from the command line even if you did solve it. Instead, you would just get a new error message that says:
Quote:
You cant run this script from telnet/shell.
So the obvious solution to this problem is to resolve the 500 error message. Since Links did not catch the error, it must be something external to the script causing the problem. Things to check are:
1. Path to perl on the top line of the script. It must point to a valid version of perl. Admin.cgi requires at least v5.001 but other Links scripts require higher versions.
2. Permissions on the script. All .cgi scripts
must be chmod 755.
3. Was the script uploaded as ASCII.
5. Are the paths at the top of links.cfg using full absolute paths from your root directory instead of relative paths (from your /cgi-bin directory, for example).
If you check all that and still have the problem, see if you can get access to the error logs to see what they have to say. Sometimes, they might help although, most of the time, they just say "premature end of script headers".
If all else fails, see if your ISP can shed any light on it. Maybe it is a cgiwrap problem (if that is installed).
I hope this helps.
[This message has been edited by Bobsie (edited July 03, 1999).]