OK, I admit to almost complete ignorance on Windows Admin types of issues, but my client has an in-house Win2k server running IIS 5 that I have to install Fileman on.

So I installed on my own Win2k/IIS 5 test box without incident. However when I went to the client site, I ran into problems. First I had to install ActivePerl and configure IIS for CGI since they didn't have that set up (adding a virtual directory for cgi-bin with .cgi and .pl associated with the path to perl, and .plx pointing to perlis.dll; checking permissions; etc.)

When I ran the install program from the command line, it all seemed to work fine. But when I then called up Fileman <http://clientsite/cgi-bin/fileman.cgi>, the login page shows up, but when I submit the form I get a 404 http error.

I then tried to run the install.cgi program from a web browser. Again the initial page showed, but posting the form generated a 404 page error.

This sounds to me like the server isn't configured to allow POST requests for .cgi files, but I checked and .pl and .cgi are configured for GET,HEAD,POST and ALL respectively. This is identical to my home setup.

I was also careful to make sure the exe path for these extensions had the %s %s arguments after the path to the binary. D:\Perl\bin\perl.exe %s %s

Any ideas? I hate IIS!!!

Compare the URL being posted to against what it actually is.

Well I don't have remote access to the box and I'm not there now, but I can issue web requests. The difference is that fully specified URLs work OK, while relative URLs, at least for CGIs, fail (the install form posts to "install.cgi" rather than "http://clientsite/cgi-bin/install.cgi").

If I specify the request as a GET with the form values encoded in the URL (http://www.clientsite.com/cgi-bin/install.cgi?lite=0&upgrade_choice=no), I don't get the 404.

I could complete the installation by issuing a GET for all the form values on the main install page, but I'm sure this would not fix the basic problem; any relative calls to "fileman.cgi" will surely fail.

Thanks for any help or guidance.

To follow up on this:

I later found out the admin of this troublesome server had (a) run some hardening scripts and (b) done some kind of config "hacking" to run two sites on the same box. When he gave me a fresh install of Win2k, fileman went in pretty much without a hitch. I suspect the trouble spot was in (b) rather than (a) but I don't have time to chase this one down.

So this was basically a Win server setup issue, not a fileman issue. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to run several sites on the same box and have CGI available to one or more of the sites. But I'm not sure exactly what the admin did -- and to the best of my knowledge, he's not sure either :|

- John