i've been trying to set up the database on a unix server. i have full permissions and rights to the cgi directory, but i can't seem to get the scripts to work.

i've tried uploading them in ASCII under their default configuration (with the .cfg file slightly changed to reflect it's location).

but every time i enter db.cgi from teh web, i get a 500 server error.

i noticed elsewhere that it was suggested that re-transfering the files would work, but that hasn't solved it either.

can anyone help me with this?

Is the perl location correct in db.cgi ?
It's usually one of these 2:

#/usr/local/bin/perl
or
#/usr/bin/perl

Plus you need to chmod the files properly.

the path to perl as returned by the whereis command is:

perl: /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/perl5.003 /usr/local/bin/perl

so i've been using #!/usr/bin/perl

i've chmoded the files using WS_FTP.
to make sure that permissions is not the problem i'm chmoding to 777

i've tried variations of the path to perl in db.cgi, as for permissions, i've kept to 777 whilst i get it working.

still not working though.

I was having exactly the same problem but i found that the problem was that i thought that cause i was uploading with WS_FTP Pro with the type set to Auto it would work - i kept getting 500 internal errors. The log said that the header was incomplete or something like that. I then uploaded with ascii only and my problems were solved. Hopes this helps?

just remembered another possible cause of your troubles - the files must be named all lower case default.pass was named Default.pass and the script couldn't find the password file. Make sure that ALL letters are lower case - hope this helps?

You are installing the demo (meaning you haven't made any real modifications to the db.cgi script), right?

A 500 error comes from one of the following--

uploading a file in binary mode
having incorrect permissions
having an incorrect path to Perl

That's the only things I have ever seen that have given a 500 error.

If you are certain that everything above is correct, I would contact your ISP admin and see if he/she can help.


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JPD

ok, i've deleted the directory on the web server, and started over.

i've transferred everything in ASCII using the manual setting and not using auto and file associations.

i've chmod-ed everything to 777 using telnet (to be sure that WS_FTP wasn't getting that wrong). i've double checked that the folders have 777 permissions too, just in case.

i've used DOS and telnet to confirm that at both ends the files are entirely lower case.

so all being well, it should work...

...but it doesn't!

anyone other ideas?

thanks

What do you mean "it doesn't work"? What happens? Do you get an error message?


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JPD

i still get the error 500 message.

  yes it is the demo, yes i roughly know what i'm doing, the last thing i tried was:

to delete everything off the web server, to download the tar.gz, to extract the tar using winzip, to transfer the tar to the server, to use the tar facility to extract the file on the server so that i didn't have to transfer the files and risk that being the cause of the error.

as such the files inherited their intended permissions, which i double-checked just in case.

i ASCII tranfered the db.cgi and default.cfg files back to my computer so that i could confirm the perl path and add the script path to the files.

i ASCII transfered these two files, and tried to access it again via http://www.belleandsebastian.co.uk/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi

and got...

... a 500 message.

but i will endeavour to contact the ISP tomorrow (it's currently near midnight here), and find out if it has anything to do with their end of things

Please let me know what you find out.

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JPD