Setting Up Perl and CGI For Wamp Server WAMP(P)
I work on Perl and CGI recently for my college project and so I decided to write a few steps on setting up Perl and CGI with Wamp Server. I hope this might be useful.
Step1:
First you need to download Wamp Server from www.wampserver.com and install Wamp Server on your machine. The default installation directory is ‘C:\wamp” and here I am using the default options for installation. To complete the installation you have to set the host name for your mail server and your email address, here you can leave the default option again. That will do no harm.
The current Wamp Server will install Apache 2.2.11, PHP 5.2.9-2 + PECL, MySQL 5.1.33, SQLitemanager and PhpMyadmin.
Step2:
Now you have to download ActivePerl (currently 5.10.0) from www.activestate.com and install it. The default installation directory is “C:\Perl“, but for simplicity and ease of use I use different directory. I create a new folder name “perl” inside “C:\wamp\bin“. So I install Active Perl in “C:\wamp\bin\perl” directory. The next thing you need to do is configure the Apache web server to execute Perl and CGI script.
Step3:
This is the most important part here. You need to edit the Apache configuration file. Now go to “C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf” directory and open “httpd.conf” file. Edit the httpd.conf file as below.
1. Inside httpd.conf, look for the line that says “<Directory “c:/wamp/www/”>“, just a few lines below this you’ll find the line that says “Options Indexes FollowSymLinks“. Add “Includes ExecCGI” in the line just next to FollowSymLinks, thus it look like this
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
This will enable CGI script inside your www folder.
2. Now look for the line “AddHandler cgi-script .cgi“, this line is commented out. You need to enable this by un-comment this line, to do that remove the # character at the beginning of this line. This will add handler for files with .cgi extension. If you want to use .pl file extension in your server add “AddHandler cgi-script .pl” just below the above line. Now you will be able to execute CGI and Perl script with .cgi and .pl, extension.
Lines to add
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi AddHandler cgi-script .pl
3. To add directory index file, look for the line “DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 index.html index.htm“. Add index.cgi and index.pl in this line.
Lines to add
DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 index.html index.htm index.cgi index.pl
Alternative: If you do not want to waste your time doing the above 3 steps, you can download the edited configuration file httpd.conf here. Replace the one inside your apache directory with this one.
Step4:
Your server is now configured and ready to run perl and cgi script. Next thing you might need to do is to configure perl to use mysql database. You need to download and install mysql driver to enable database connection through your perl script. You have to grab the driver from the ActivePerl package repository. However, mysql driver module is not available in the default ActivePerl Package Repository. So, you need to add additional repository and install from that repository. Follow the steps below:
1. Open command prompt [type cmd in run], then type “ppm repo add uwinnipeg” and press enter.
2. After the “uwinnipeg” repository is added successfully, you can install DBD-mysql by typing this command “ppm install DBD-mysql” and hit enter.
Note: The ActivePerl default package repository contains DBD-mysqlPP module. If you install that one, you will get an error in your SQL SELECT query and especially when you use the WHERE clause. Your localhost will hang if you run this kind of query with the WHERE clause, so to get it work you need to install the package that I mentioned above only.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:57 PM
[...] Setting Perl and CGI in Wamp Server 2.0 Posted May 12, 2009 Filed under: Perl and CGI | I found a useful link that will help you in running a perl and cgi script ( files with extension .pl or .cgi ). It has got step by step explaination of the installation . I was succesful in running the cgi in my PC. I hope you might get lucky too. http://www.chromicdesign.com/2009/05/setting-up-perl-for-wampp.html [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 10:52 PM
Thumps up !!!
June 15th, 2009 at 1:07 PM
[...] Chromic Design, Setting Up Perl and CGI For Wamp Server. [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 4:27 PM
Very Very good to know and helpful for me
Thank you
July 21st, 2009 at 10:54 PM
thank you mean . very good article
August 12th, 2009 at 12:35 PM
Thank you very much.very good article
August 29th, 2009 at 11:37 PM
Thanx for the info
it worked!
September 18th, 2009 at 3:50 AM
very nice and to the point, thanks a lot.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:18 AM
[...] Setting Up Perl and CGI For Wamp Server WAMP(P) | Chromic Design [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:25 PM
thank u, that really helped me a lot
October 27th, 2009 at 2:30 PM
Hi Everyone,
I followed above all steps to configure perl but i am unable to execute .pl & .cgi file extension in the wamp2.0 server.
i am getting error: Internal server error…
Components:
wamp2.0
ActivePerl-5.10.1.1006-MSWin32-x86-291086.msi
So please help me to solve this problem.
November 20th, 2009 at 6:24 AM
thanks for the explicit walkthrough helped me quite a bit.
November 26th, 2009 at 10:59 PM
@matrix,
I solved the same problem as yours. Here’s how to do it:
Let’s write Hello World script for Perl. I copied it from Wikipedia that has this script:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print “Hello, world!\n”;
But it gives 500:Internal Server Error. This is because, this script tells WampServer to look into /usr/bin/perl for perl.exe but out perl.exe is in c:/wamp/bin/perl/bin/. So, we have to use a script like this:
#!c:/wamp/bin/perl/bin/perl
print “Hello, world!\n”;
So, insert this #! commented line at top of your every script and it will work fine without giving HTTP 500 error.
Enjoy@Perl. This is my first day on Perl.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:49 PM
i got 500 internal server error
December 27th, 2009 at 4:20 AM
Great explanation, worked flawlessly. I was trying to get Warrick – http://warrick.cs.odu.edu, a website archive re-builder working with WAMP Server and this was the ticket. Thanks, great job. Very thorough and easy to follow.
Zach Browne
January 12th, 2010 at 8:56 AM
Thank you very much for posting this tutorial, it seemed to point me in the right direction!
I did find you can combine these lines into one:
1. AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
2. AddHandler cgi-script .pl
AddHandler cgi-script .pl .cgi
I also found you can type:
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
Lastly you definitely need to declare the path as
#!c:/wamp/bin/perl/bin/perl
If you don’t have the right path you’ll receive 403 Permissions Denied
March 21st, 2010 at 12:04 AM
Hi,
I got a big problem, the server isn’t willing to go Online anymore… What can i do to fix this problem!!
March 27th, 2010 at 6:00 PM
my cgi and perl code will not execute
April 3rd, 2010 at 5:51 PM
Very gud article man… it helped me alot.
April 6th, 2010 at 9:03 PM
Even after following the steps , I’m not able to run cgi scripts . it’s opening the program. where should i save the cgi files?in c:/wamp/www or in c:/wamp/bin/apache/apache2.2/cgi-bin ?
pls somebody help me out..
April 15th, 2010 at 1:18 PM
First of all thanks for good article.
And also “Brett The Tech Guy” for right direction
May 16th, 2010 at 9:20 AM
Hey man…
thanks a lot for this article.. this has helped me a lot
cheerrzzz man…
June 28th, 2010 at 7:16 PM
Thanks for tutorial, didn’t work for me, but this did in case anyone else has the same issues I did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j-gugt9Xcw
July 5th, 2010 at 10:33 AM
I just wanted to say, this is probably one of the best guides on the web for this task. I did run into some problems configuring the httpd.conf file though. Its a good idea to make a copy of the orginal httpd.conf file case you do run into any problems. The syntax can be tricky and might require a few tries.
I suggest changing one line at a time, then re-starting the Apache server. This way you can track any problem you may run into. This way you will know which line is giving you the problem. You can also use the error log on the WAMPserver console. The Apache.org also have some very useful notes on this subject.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/misc/FAQ.html#CGIoutsideScriptAlias
As an overview, there are 3 things happening here. First, is the Perl install itself. Second, you must tell Apache where to look for the .pl/cgi files you want to run. Brett’s response posted above pretty much covers the things not mentioned in the original posting about the httpd.conf file. Lastly, those same files must tell Apache where (#! path/to/perl.exe) the Perl interpreter is located. You can do a system search for(perl.exe) to be sure. make sure you include the .exe on the perl.exe.
If you are a beginner like me, I recommend creating a simple “Hello World.pl” program once you install actveperl to test the install, then try running it on the server itself. I wasn’t able to get the browser in activeperl to work (something about privacy issues), so I just used the PSPad editor I had used to write my PHP code. Place the Hello.cgi file in the directory listed in the httpd.conf file. I used: http://www.cgi101.com/book/ch1/text.html to get me started with my perl. Again, it important that your test program has the exact path to perl.exe on the first line of the program.
It took a few tries but I cannot say how good it felt to finally see… “Hello World!”
ps
also make sure the alias modules and the cgi modules are installed and enabled too.
July 31st, 2010 at 7:38 PM
thank u for the post
August 6th, 2010 at 9:51 AM
Now how to host and run website? Setup and Access databases ?
August 6th, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Thank you all for writing your comments. I will try to resume writing on my blog again after a long pause due to my studies.
@Locus: I will try to write on this one. Thanks
@Melli: Thanks for the plus tutorial.
August 12th, 2010 at 9:06 PM
Thanks for the info, this has saved me a lot of time. It has to feel great to know your blog has helped people for over a year!