This may sound weird. but my ISP says he has reset the permissions on my dbman files and the folders in my cgi-bin several times. It seems each time I edit or modify a dbman file and then FTP it to its cgi-bin folder, the permissions somehow get reset to the default read-only or executable only status, which of course does not allow DBMan to run properly.

By the way, we are running on a WindowsNT server that also hosts out FrontPage Web.

Anyway, my ISP says running Pearl scripts on a WindowsNT server is a "Crap Shoot" at best and seemes to think something in DBMan is responsible for reseting the permissions. Is that TRUE? Is that POSSIBLE? Is my ISP blowing smoke? Is there a workable, easy solution?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Big Britchs
IDunno4Recipes.com


------------------
BigBritchs
BigBritchs@IDunno4Recipes.com
http://www.IDunno4Recipes.com

Your ISP is blowing smoke a little bit. Yet I as a NT Administrator have noticed that permissions of DBMAN files and directories do tend to revert to default permissions. I have not solved this problem yet, but I am slowing but surely moving towards using Perl modules like CGI.pm that will hopefully overcome this permission problem.

One thing that I would suggest to your ISP is that they set Full Control for Everyone for your files and directories. Also, your ISP probably doesn't want to deal with the overhead associated with changing permissions of cgi files and directories. They probably prefer their customers to use ASP pages because it is more stable in the Windows environment (also proprietary with Microsoft, but can now run on UNIX servers with ChiliSoft! server installed).

Hope this helps.

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Founder and Editor
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
http://www.anthrotech.com/
info@anthrotech.com
==========================
Coconino Community College
http://www.coco.cc.az.us/
Web Technology
Coordinator
elee@coco.cc.az.us

Thanks for the input! Glad to here its not JUST ME!

You are certainly right about one thing, my ISP did in fact suggets ASP pages, but for another issue. We had a robot come into our pages and go through everything, including the cgi-bin and the dbman database! I was told this either couldn't or wouldn't be possible; that spiders ignore cgi scripts. This thing spent over 13 hours and downloaded over 15,000 KB of data, presumably content.

It came from GTE SuperPages and after complaining to them, we got a letter explaining that they had spidered the page "Using advanced patent-pending classification technology from GTE Laboratories" to search the web and build a database of all products existing on the internet. We are not done with them yet, but are waiting till after the Labor Day holiday to persue this further.

Anyway, when we asked our ISP about this, he said the best way to protect our content was with ASP pages. But, here is MY question:

If ASP pages prevent spiders, are legitimate search engine spiders still able to access your pages in order to include them in their listings?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

------------------
BigBritchs
BigBritchs@IDunno4Recipes.com
http://www.IDunno4Recipes.com





[This message has been edited by BigBritchs (edited September 04, 1999).]

That is another bit of smoke. ASP will not prevent spiders from indexing your site content. One of the things that your ISP needs to do is set the proper permissions on share directories on their NT systems.

I have heard and read some articles about newer spidering technology that will extract content from executable files and database files (even if you have created a robots.txt to disallow indexing of certain directories and file types). Of course, with Pentium 3 Processors, the Web is becoming more open than ever.

I really don't know what you tell you in terms of dealing with your ISP. Although you can use Perl as the scripting language for ASP files. (I am looking at transferring my cgi files into ASP files. But it ain't that easy.)



Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Founder and Editor
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
http://www.anthrotech.com/
info@anthrotech.com
==========================
Coconino Community College
http://www.coco.cc.az.us/
Web Technology
Coordinator
elee@coco.cc.az.us

Thanks again, Eliot!

I don't know if my ISP is blowing smoke or if either 1) I don't quite understand his responses to my questions, or 2) He really believes what he says. I sometimes get the feeling he knows about as much as I do, and that's scarey!

Let me know when you succeed with the transferring of cgi files into ASP files if you decide to post it here.

Again, thanks for the input.


------------------
BigBritchs
BigBritchs@IDunno4Recipes.com
http://www.IDunno4Recipes.com





[This message has been edited by BigBritchs (edited September 13, 1999).]

Will do. It may help other NT users. I do know that cgi and perl scripts take up a lot of system resources and also CPU processing. So, using asp files with NT is more efficient. But I prefer cgi scripts because that is my background.

I would recommend that you check out some ASP web sites to find out more about it. I have a list of ASP sites located on the following web page:

www.coco.cc.az.us/~it/webctr/tools/asp/

Regards,

------------------
Eliot Lee
Founder and Editor
Anthro TECH, L.L.C
http://www.anthrotech.com/
info@anthrotech.com
==========================
Coconino Community College
http://www.coco.cc.az.us/
Web Technology
Coordinator
elee@coco.cc.az.us