Can't change the cgi-bin path in Apache

Question

Installed Apache and the default web root was /var/www I wanted to change the cgi-bin to somewhere within the /var/www but I cannot. It only works at /usr/lib/cgi-bin.

I even tried it with putting a webroot directory in my home directory with a cgi-bin in it and made the changes accordingly in the conf. but the only way it works is when cgi-bin settings point to /usr/lib/cgi-bin.

VirtualHost:

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    #DocumentRoot /var/www
    DocumentRoot /home/aj/public_html

    <Directory />
            Options FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride None
    </Directory>
    #<Directory /var/www/>
    <Directory /home/aj/public_html/>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
            AllowOverride None
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all  
            AddHandler mod_python .py
            PythonHandler mod_python.publisher
            PythonDebug On
    </Directory>

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/aj/public_html/cgi-bin/
    #ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
    #<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin/>
    <Directory /home/aj/public_html/cgi-bin/>
            AllowOverride None
            Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel debug

    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

    Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
    <Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
            Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride None
            Order deny,allow
            Deny from all
            Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Apache log has this error:

script not found or unable to stat: /home/aj/public_html/cgi-bin

Some more info:

After doing a " ps -AF | grep ap" command I got the result back and I think Apache processes are running either as root or www-data. Here is the dump:

root     22762     1  0  8543  8952   0 00:30 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22764 22762  0  8669  5928   0 00:30 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22765 22762  0  8543  5152   0 00:30 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22766 22762  0  8669  5928   0 00:30 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Please help. Thanks.

Answer 1

If the user account under which Apache is running (guest? nobody?) does not have access to /home/aj/public/cgi-bin then you would see that error.

Please examine the User and Group settings in the httpd.conf, and also examine the output of this command:

ls -ld /home/aj /home/aj/public_html /home/aj/public_html/cgi-bin

Would the Apache user be able to see the cgi-bin directory?

In what way does using e.g. /var/www/cgi-bin not work?
Was there some error message on startup, or did you see an error in the browser when sending a request to a script?

Possibly you have the same problem with /var/www as with your home directory; namely that the Apache process does not have access to that folder.

Note this is all conjecture until we know what user accounts and permissions are in effect.

Answer 2

If cou are profficiend with strace, I suggest you run non forked instance of httpd through strace and see why errors appear. Strace will tell you if it's permission problem or wrong path.

Answer 3

Got it!

PythonHandler mod_python.publisher 

needs to be

PythonHandler mod_python.cgihandler

Then you can run Python as CGI.