CNT4713 Week 1 Coding

In addition to posting examples of Python to your GitHub account, create a web presence for cgi scripts and create a script that displays some HTTP request headers. You will also limit access to the cgi-bin folder.

Create a web folder for scripts

Create a web folder and cgi-bin folder on ocelot

• Create a web folder on ocelot named public_html in your root folder. Change the permission to 705.
• Change the permissions on your root folder to 701 with chmod 701 ~
• Create a subfolder of public_html named cgi-bin. Change the permission to 705.

Limit Access to cgi-bin

We do not want other people (like hackers) to run your scripts (over and over again).

• Add a file named .htaccess to the cgi-bin folder
• Set the permissions on the file to 604:

  chmod 604 .htaccess

• Include the following in the .htaccess file, replacing your-fiu-username with your FIU username. Be very careful with this file. If you make a mistake, you will generate a 500 error.

  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "your-fiu-username cgi-bin access"
  AuthUserFile  /aul/homes/downeyt/etc/2101/registered.passwd
  Require user downeyt your-fiu-username

• Use the password that I sent the other day to access your scripts from a browser.

Create a cgi script

• Save it in the cgi-bin folder.
• Change its permission to 705.
• Be sure the file has a .cgi extension, not .py.
• The script should return a complete HTML response that displays your name and username.
  • It should also display the HTTP request headers for Accept, Accept-Language, Query-string, User-agent and Request-Method.
  • If the Query String is empty, print an appropriate message
  • They are all in the operating system environment (a dictionary in the os module, named environ). The names in the environment are all upper case, the - is replaced with _, and some of them are prefixed with HTTP_.
  • Write a loop that displays all the keys in the environment, to see how each header is spelled, then display the values you want.
• Change the script to a cgi script:

  The following changes to your script will allow it to be run from ocelot. Replace username with your FIU email username and script-name with the name of the script in the following URL:

  http://ocelot.aul.fiu.edu/~username/cgi-bin/script-name.cgi

  • Set the extension on all your scripts to .cgi
  • Add this statement as the first statement in the script file:
    

    #!/usr/bin/python

  • If you do not have it, import the sys module:
    

    import sys

  • Add these statements as the first executable statements, after the #! statement, in your script. They will allow you to see any errors that are generated by your script and to see all output from your script:

    sys.stderr = sys.stdout
    print "Content-type: text/plain\n"

Create an Index Page in public_html

I want to be able to run your scripts on ocelot, without having to type the name of each script in the URL.

• Create a file named index.html in the public_html folder.
• Use my index page as a reference: Index Page.
• you may copy the source of my page and modify it with your name and the names of your scripts.

Notify and Post

• Send me an email with a link to your index page.
• Post your script to GitHub, along with your other efforts to learn Python.