Running a Python CGI Server

bradydowling 2016-01-26 19:51:17 UTC #1

In order to run a Python CGI server, you can start by creating a new workspace. It doesn’t have to be a Python/Django workspace, even a Custom workspace would do. You would need to tell the Apache2 server already installed on the workspace to allow CGI scripts and to make sure it knows where to look for them.

Lets start by creating a very simple python CGI script:

Create a folder within your workspace, name it cgi-bin (the name doesn’t matter, although it is customary to use cgi-bin).
Within the cgi-bin folder, create a new file. Lets name it test.py for now.
Paste in the following:

#!/usr/bin/env python

print "Content-type: text/html"
print ""

print """
<html>

<head><title>Sample CGI Script</title></head>

<body>
  <h3> Sample CGI Script </h3>
</body>
</html>
"""

Now, once we have a file we want to serve, lets start up the Apache web server. We can do that by creating a new runner. You can create a new runner by clicking on the + icon on the right of the tabs like shown below:

then select Apache httpd (PHP, HTML)

You can save this configuration by entering a name to the right of the Command: label like shown below.

Click on the Run button and the apache server is ready to go. Click on the link that reads something like: https://<workspace-name>-<your-username>.c9.io/ and you should see a browser come up with your folder listing. Clicking on the cgi-bin link and then the test.py link just shows up the text of the python file we wrote. Now that we have the server running, lets enable CGI on it.

The first thing we want to do is to enable CGI mode. We can do that by typing the following within the Terminal:

sudo a2enmod cgi

Next, we need to tell Apache where our CGI files are present. We can do that by editing the serve-cgi-bin.conf file. Do the following:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf

The file should read something like this:

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
        <IfModule mod_cgi.c>
                Define ENABLE_USR_LIB_CGI_BIN
        </IfModule>

        <IfModule mod_cgid.c>
                Define ENABLE_USR_LIB_CGI_BIN
        </IfModule>

        <IfDefine ENABLE_USR_LIB_CGI_BIN>
                ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
                <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
                        AllowOverride None
                        Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
                        Require all granted
                </Directory>
        </IfDefine>
</IfModule>

We just need to modify the following section from:

<IfDefine ENABLE_USR_LIB_CGI_BIN>
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
    <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
        AllowOverride None
        Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</IfDefine>

<IfDefine ENABLE_USR_LIB_CGI_BIN>
    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/ubuntu/workspace/cgi-bin/
    <Directory "/home/ubuntu/workspace/cgi-bin">
        AllowOverride None
        Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .py
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</IfDefine>

Save this file and restart Apache.

Once Apache restarts, navigate to https://<workspace-name>-<your-username>.c9.io/cgi-bin/test.py (replacing <workspace-name> and <your-username> with your workspace name and your username of course) and see what happens? In case you’re seeing something like Internal Server Error we need to make the files under cgi-bin to be executable.

You can do that by typing

chmod +x -R /home/ubuntu/workspace/cgi-bin

Restart Apache one last time and you should be able to see Sample CGI Script.

How to setup CGI

Tutorials - Table of Contents

Run cgi script from ruby on rails public directory

fishhbot 2016-08-12 01:26:00 UTC #2

I’m sorry - this is all new to me (Linux, programming, etc. I’m using Cloud9 for a class on Perl) - I follow the complete instructions (have tried 5 times now), but when I attempt to click on the cgi-bin folder I get the following error message:

‘403 Forbidden: You don’t have permission to access /cgi-bin/ on this server.’

It doesn’t do this until I enable CGI mode (with ‘sudo a2enmod cgi’). I can access the folder fine when I run the Apache server up until that point. After hours of Googling, I still can’t figure out what to do. Any help would be much appreciated!

How to run a CGI server

bindewald 2017-09-16 17:14:21 UTC #3

I followed the instructions precisely - but my browser would only display the raw python code instead of the demo text “Sample CGI Script”. Eventually I issued the command suggested by fishbot: sudo a2enmod cgi and restarted the apache2 server. After that, the test python cgi script works fine! Please update the initial tutorial to include this missing step.