Serving CGI Scripts With Nginx On Ubuntu 12.04 - Page 3

4 Using Fcgiwrap

Fcgiwrap is another CGI wrapper that should work also for complex CGI scripts and - like Simple CGI - can be used for shared hosting environments because it allows each vhost to use its own cgi-bin directory.

Install the fcgiwrap package: 

apt-get install fcgiwrap

After the installation, the fcgiwrap daemon should already be started; its socket is /var/run/fcgiwrap.socket. If it is not running, you can use the /etc/init.d/fcgiwrap script to start it.

Now open your vhost configuration file...

vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/www.example.com.vhost

... and add a location /cgi-bin {} section to the server {} container:

server {
[...]
   location /cgi-bin/ {
     # Disable gzip (it makes scripts feel slower since they have to complete
     # before getting gzipped)
     gzip off;

     # Set the root to /usr/lib (inside this location this means that we are
     # giving access to the files under /usr/lib/cgi-bin)
     root  /var/www/www.example.com;

     # Fastcgi socket
     fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;

     # Fastcgi parameters, include the standard ones
     include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;

     # Adjust non standard parameters (SCRIPT_FILENAME)
     fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
   }
[...]
}

Reload nginx:

/etc/init.d/nginx reload

Next we create our cgi-bin directory - /var/www/www.example.com/cgi-bin because we defined root /var/www/www.example.com; in the location /cgi-bin {} container: 

mkdir /var/www/www.example.com/cgi-bin

Now we place our CGI scripts in it and make them executable. For testing purposes I will create a small Hello World Perl script (instead of hello_world.cgi you can also use the extension .pl -> hello_world.pl):

vi /var/www/www.example.com/cgi-bin/hello_world.cgi
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

     # Tell perl to send a html header.
     # So your browser gets the output
     # rather then <stdout>(command line
     # on the server.)
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

     # print your basic html tags.
     # and the content of them.
print "<html><head><title>Hello World!! </title></head>\n";
print "<body><h1>Hello world</h1></body></html>\n";
 
chmod 755 /var/www/www.example.com/cgi-bin/hello_world.cgi

Open a browser and test the script:

http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/hello_world.cgi

If all goes well, you should get the following output:

 

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About The Author

Falko Timme is the owner of nginx WebhostingTimme Hosting (ultra-fast nginx web hosting). He is the lead maintainer of HowtoForge (since 2005) and one of the core developers of ISPConfig (since 2000). He has also contributed to the O'Reilly book "Linux System Administration".

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