After submit button is clicked cgi page does not open- internal error

[chuckID]

Hi,

I was able to get one of my .cgi scripts to work located at

http://mydomainname.com/cgi-bin/create_form.cgi?setup=sample

But when the submit button is clicked, I receive the error:
"Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request." This page is supposed to load:

http://mydomainname.com/cgi-bin/submit_data.cgi

I am supposed to just edit two setup pages (admin.setup and sample.setup) to make this rather involved email management system work. Why wouldn't this submit_data.cgi page load? Are my paths incorrect in the .setup files? The submit_data.cgi is definately upload to my cgi-bin. Can the scripts find my submit_data.cgi script using the below paths? Below are the variables that are supposed to be changed in the admin.setup and sample.setup files:
# Variables

# 1. Mail agent options. By default, @Manager uses the smtp server on
# your server, but can be reset to use sendmail. Sendmail only applies to
# Unix-type servers, while smtp should work on both Unix and Windows servers.
# Sendmail may bog down when sending email to large lists.
#$use_smtp = "on";
#$smtp = "mail.pointxpress.com";

$bcc_packet = 200; # batch size for Bcc mail

$use_sendmail = "on";
$SENDMAIL = "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t";

# 2. The e-mail address of the site owner
$MERCHANT = 'myemail.com';

# 3. The password to login to the merchant admin
$password = "password";

# 4. List of domains and IPs which have permission to make requests from the script.
# List all IP and domains in quotes and separated by commas.
@referers = ('mydomain.com', '

http://www.mydomain.com',

'##.###.###.###'); # required

# file and path references
# all paths should be relative to the CGI directory that the admin.cgi is in.

# 5. Path to database data (.db) file
# For data security this directory should not be accessible by a browser
$db_directory = "../data_4523657/"; # trailing slash required

# 6. Path to standard HTML documents directory
$html_path = "../atm_help/"; # trailing slash required

# 7. Path and file name for @-Manager admin interface script (from domain i.e.

http://www.yourdomain.com)

$script_url = "../cgi-bin/admin.cgi";

# 8. Path and file name for form response file.
$splashpage = "../splash.html";

# 9. Directories to search for e-mail template files when using bulk mail.
# Can enter multiple directories, put path in quotes and separated by commas.
@template_directories = ("../emails"

# 10. Path to help files
$help_path = "../atm_help/";

# 11. Name of online help frameset.
$helpfile = "atm_help.html";
$aboutfile = "atm_about.html";

#################### and sample.setup ################

# 1. - The name of the table this setup file is to work with
$db = "sample";

###################################################
# Variables

# 2. Mail agent options. By default, @Manager uses the smtp server on
# your server, but can be reset to use sendmail. Sendmail only applies to
# Unix-type servers, while smtp should work on both Unix and Windows servers.

$use_smtp = "on";
$smtp = "mail.pointxpress.com";

#$use_sendmail = "on";
#$SENDMAIL = "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t";

# 3. The e-mail address of the site owner
$MERCHANT = 'myemail.com';

# 4. List of domains and IPs which have permission to make request from the script.
# List all IP and domains in quotes and separated by commas.
@referers = ('mydomainname.com', '

http://www.mydomainname.com',

'##.###.###.###'); # required

###################################################
# file and path references
# all paths should be relative to the CGI directory in which are located
# the files create_form.cgi and submit_data.cgi

# 5. Path to database data (.db) file
# For data security this directory should not be accessible by a browser
$db_directory = "../data/"; # trailing slash required

# 6. Path to standard HTML documents directory
$html_path = "../"; # trailing slash required

# 7. The HTML template for auto-generated forms
$ret_file = "./default_form.html";

# 8. The HTML template that is returned when a form is submitted with a missing
# required field
$error_file = "./required_field_error.html";

# 9. The HTML template that is returned after a successful form submission
$splashpage = "./splash.html";

# 10. The domain that the @-Manager resides on
$url = "

http://www.mydomainname.com";

# 11. Set to 1 to allow empty fields on form submission. Required fields are
# still verified.
$allow_empty_fields_on_insert = 1;

# 12. number of fields to display on auto-generated forms.
# Note use the total required fields - 1.
$form_fields = 14;

###################################################
# Form submission actions. When a form is submitted data can be saved to a
# table, an email can be sent to the merchant, and email can be sent to the
# customer (person submitting)

# 13. If set to "0", emails are sent, but no DB is written to (formmail mode)
$write_to_db = 1;

# 14. Uncomment the option you want to use. Only uncomment 1.
#$cust_email_only = "on";
#$merc_email_only = "on";
$email_both = "on";

# 15. If you turned on merc_email_only or email_both specify where the
# template can be found to e-mail to the merchant (merc_email_template)
# likewise for the cust_email template if cust email is turned on
$merc_email_template = "../emails/merc_email.tpl";
$cust_email_template = "../emails/cust_email.tpl";

# 16. Provide a subject for the merchant and customer e-mail messages
# if the respective sumbission e-mails are turned on.
$merc_subject = "Whatever";
$cust_subject = "Whatever";

 

[tviman]

Check your servers error logs! There's always a better way...

 

[Coderifous]

Also, it helps if you put this at the top:

use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

This is a very convenient method for making wonderful error messages show up in your browser instead of the same 'ol "Internal Server Error".

Hope this helps.

--jim

 

[Massyn]

Have a look at <a href=&quot;

http://phillipmassyn.tripod.com/cgi.../phillipmassyn.tripod.com/cgitrouble.htm</a>.

I've listed most of the common CGI related problems.

 

[chuckID]

Ok much better,

Thanks for making the error more explicit. Here it is:
Can't locate Sendmail.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.6.1/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.6.1 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/i686-linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl .) at submit_data.cgi line 10.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at submit_data.cgi line 10.

Line 10 is:
use Sendmail;

What is @INC (@INC and what does it mean?
The sendmail.pm file is located in my cgi-bin as well. Why can't it find the sendmail.pm file?

Thanks,
Chuck

 

[Coderifous]

Perl can't find the module.
Try putting this at the top of your script:
(before the use Sendmail statment)

BEGIN { push @INC, '.' }

The @INC array is a special perl variable that contains a list of the paths perl searches when you try to include a file with 'use' or 'require'. Checkout &quot;perldoc perlvar&quot; for more special variables.

By pushing the dot (.) onto the array, we are adding one extra path to the @INC list. The . represents &quot;Current Directory&quot;, which to your script would be whichever one it is running in. You could also replace the dot with an absolute path to the directory that contains your Sendmail.pm module:

BEGIN { push @INC, '/path/to/module' }

But since you indicated that your module and script were in the same directory, you could likely just use the dot. Make sure that you are being case-specific (upper/lower case letters) when 'use'ing your modules.

Hope this helps.

--jim