Linux noob question on scripts 2

[Hondy]

Hi

I'm new to Linux and I'm looking for some help on Shell Scripts. I am trying to fix a legacy web application which has involved reinstalling Apache which is fine.

My problem is that the old system used .sh scripts, I see there is a "sh" executable in a CGI-BIN directory.

1) what application is this?
2) how do I install it on my new Apache server?

Thanks

Hondy

 

[Hondy]

OK so it seems that SH is Linux's built in script engine.

The scripts that I need to run via a web page on apache all have #!/bin/sh at the start, should these run easily through a web link? The only reason I ask is that they are sitting in a CGI-BIN directory, they don't need to be right?

 

[geirendre]

The .sh extension indicates that it's a Bourne-shell script.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_shell

So to answer your questions:
1) It's a regular shell script.
2) There is no spesial way to "install" a shell script.
Basicaly you just copy the .sh file to the desired location,
and make sure it's executable.
A command like:

chmod +x scriptname.sh

would make the script named scriptname.sh executable.

Some usefull links about Linux and scripting:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html

http://freeos.com/guides/lsst/

http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml

http://linuxcommand.org/writing_shell_scripts.php

And a good book:

http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

 

[Hondy]

Thanks, that confirms what I thought, I have no idea why they are in a CGI-BIN directory, must be an historical thing.

Cheers

 

[jstreich]

What geirendre was saying applies to from the command line.

cgi-bin is a security thing. The idea is that all exeutable scripts (that aren't modules to the apache (like PHP)) should be in cgi-bin and then the web root should never have anything in it that has the executable flag set.

They need to be in cgi-bin to be executed as a cgi script. So that whoever is the admin for the server can quickly check what can and can't be executed.

If the urls bother you, you can use mod_rewrite rules to make the URLs look like the scripts are in more relevent places. See:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/cgi.html

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[Hondy]

thanks jstreich, that makes sense, so its more of a best practise than a functional thing. I always thought that CGI-BIN was a perl only affair.