PERL CGI Beginners - Background info

Author

Background info

Sander

2004-09-24, 8:55 am

After recent web host problems, we decided to host our own website. My
hosting server is running Win XP with apache 2.3.1 on it. My site is
working but now I am trying to work out the kinks. We use a simple
formmail.cgi script to allow visitors to submit a questionaire. What do I
need to set up to allow that form to work again. Will apache be able to
send mail or does "sendmail" need to communicate with a different mail
server. Just trying to grasp the concept of how it works. Thanks

Chris Devers

2004-09-24, 8:55 am

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Sander wrote:

> After recent web host problems, we decided to host our own website. My
> hosting server is running Win XP with apache 2.3.1 on it.

Are you sure about this? The current version of Apache2 is 2.0.51.

> My site is working but now I am trying to work out the kinks. We use
> a simple formmail.cgi script to allow visitors to submit a
> questionaire. What do I need to set up to allow that form to work
> again. Will apache be able to send mail or does "sendmail" need to
> communicate with a different mail server. Just trying to grasp the
> concept of how it works. Thanks

Where did you get your copy of formmail.cgi ? There is an older program
for this that is unreliable and insecure -- do not use it. There is a
more recent version from a project called NMS that provides a much
better version. It can be downloaded from:

<http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/scripts.shtml>

If the formmail you are using is not this one, it probably should be.
Download that one and read over the documentation it provides, then try
to install it and let us know -- in some detail -- if anything breaks.

--
Chris Devers

Gunnar Hjalmarsson

2004-09-24, 3:55 pm

Sander wrote:
> Will apache be able to send mail

No.

> or does "sendmail" need to communicate with a different mail
> server.

You need a mail server, a mail transfer agent (MTA) to be precise, to
send mail. If you don't have one installed locally, such as sendmail
or Postfix, it's possible to use a remote MTA instead. It should be
noted that many scripts include a simple pipe to the local mail
program, and a remote MTA precludes that technique.

--
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
Email: http://www.gunnar.cc/cgi-bin/contact.pl

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