pdf files from the cgi-bin directory

External Since: Jul 02, 2003 Posts: 22

Im using the perl modules PDF::Create and PDF::Reuse to add some form input
fields to a pdf.
I then want to be able to download into the browser the created pdf file.
I seem to be able only to create the file in the cgi-bin directory
( prDocDir('/tmp/') seems not to work;
I can open the file (using xpdf) directly

eg
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# perl stuff to create a pdf file
I then use a bit of perl to write the new page page.

print "content-type:text/html\n\n";
print '<HTML><HEAD><TITLE></TITLE>';
print '<body>';
print '<a href="http://webserver.com/cgi-bin/form.pdf">Download your
file</a>';
print '</body></HTML>';

This gives me a 500 Internal Server Error

bash-2.05b# tail /etc/apache2/logs/error_log
[Sat Mar 13 22:15:54 2004] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Premature end of
script headers: form.pdf
[Sat Mar 13 22:15:54 2004] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] (2)No such file or
directory: cannot access type map
file: /home/httpd/errorHTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR.html.var

ie it thinks the file is a script!!

the cgi-bin directory is configured with
Options +ExecCGI directive

bash-2.05b# cd /etc/apache2/conf/vhosts/
bash-2.05b# cat vhosts.conf |grep pdf
bash-2.05b# pwd
/etc/apache2/conf
bash-2.05b# cat commonapache2.conf |grep pdf
AddIcon /icons/layout.gif .html .shtml .htm .pdf

ie there are no stray config things

Can i allow apache to serve pdf ( or txt) files from a cgi-bin directory ?

External Since: Nov 03, 2003 Posts: 2907

p cooper <pdconetwofour_numbers_.RemoveThis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I seem to be able only to create the file in the cgi-bin directory
> ( prDocDir('/tmp/') seems not to work;

You should create a temporary directory inside Apache's document
tree and then refer to it as a 'relative' path, not absolute
(prDocDir('../temp/')).

> Can i allow apache to serve pdf ( or txt) files from a cgi-bin
> directory ?

No, he will try to execute them as CGI.

Davide

--
| Windows - From the people who brought you EDLIN!
|
|
|