HOWTO run CGI scripts on Opalstack

sean

Still using CGI? Really? Wow... I can't even... 🤯

Just kidding, Opalstack has you covered! ✨

Here's how to get your ancient-but-beloved CGI scripts running on Opalstack:

I'm using Python in my examples here but all of this should work for Perl, bash, or whatever you're using for your CGI script.

Create a new Apache/PHP-FPM app via your Opalstack dashboard and hook it up to whatever site.
Upload your CGI scripts into the app directory.

Edit or create the .htaccess file in your app directory to add the extensions that your CGI scripts use, eg .cgi, .pl, .py or whatever like so:

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .py

Make your scripts executable with the following command (adjust as necessary for your files):

chmod 700 ~/apps/appname/*.py

That's pretty much it, at that point your scripts should execute as CGI (as the app's shell user) when requested via your site.

If it doesn't work:

Check the permissions - the scripts must be set to 700, which is read/write/execute for your shell user, and no permissions for anybody else.

Check the "shebang", ie the first line of your scripts. They must point to a valid path for whatever interpreter will run the script, eg:

#!/bin/python3

If the script is running Python from a virtual environment, then be sure to use the full path to Python for that environment, eg:

#!/home/user/envname/bin/python

Give it a try, let me know what problems you run into, and let's make this work together! 🙂

miopa

sean Tried this on Awstats instance moved from webfaction, it works!

this is my .htacsess

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .pl
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ %{REQUEST_URI}cgi-bin/awstats.pl [R]

sean

miopa awesome, yes it's pretty easy to get AWStats working 🙂

rrr

miopa Thanks for the tip!

What permissions did you use? Did you set all *.pl files to 700 or only the awstats.pl? What about awstats.conf?

sean

rrr use 700 on all of the scripts and on their parent directories.

awstats.conf should be 600.

miopa

The default webfaction awstats setup was quite bad, I also added password authentication and this

<FilesMatch "\.(php|pm|conf|sh|txt|log)$">
  Order allow,deny
</FilesMatch>

k4ml

This is how I run django app as cgi.

My .htaccess:-

Options Indexes
Options FollowSymlinks
Options SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Options +ExecCGI
DirectoryIndex index.py
AddHandler cgi-script .py
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.py/$1 [L,QSA]

And this is my index.py:-

#!/home/username/apps-src/myproject/venv/bin/python

import os
import sys
import site
import wsgiref.handlers

PROJECT_ROOT = "/home/username/apps-src/myproject/"
sys.path.insert(0, PROJECT_ROOT)

from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myproject.settings'
os.environ['SCRIPT_NAME'] = ""

import django;django.setup()
application = WSGIHandler()
wsgiref.handlers.CGIHandler().run(application)

I created separate $HOME/apps-src/ to hold the actual project code and venv.

sean

k4ml that's an interesting approach!

I've always had the impression that Django was a bit too heavy for CGI. Do you get acceptable performance with your Django app?

Also if you don't mind answering: what type of site is it?

anjanesh

k4ml So with CGI we can run Django and PHP on the same app ?!

k4ml

sean we run django wiki. For a team of 8, it's quite acceptable, running on Value Stack plan.

k4ml

anjanesh I don't really understand what you mean by the "same app" but definitely you can have index.py, index.php etc running side by side and as long as you access them directly (https://yourapp.com/index.py, https://yourapp.com/index.php) it should work.