Scripting:

How do I prevent the '500 Internal Server Error' when running CGI scripts?

Syntax or coding errors in your CGI/Perl script may produce an "Internal Server Error".

CGI Script Guidelines:
1. When editing your CGI script, use a program that saves the file as a 'text file' type. DO NOT use Notepad that comes with Microsoft Windows because it doesn't save files in pure ASCII text format. Use Wordpad instead to edit files.

2. Upload your CGI scripts in ASCII mode into the cgi-bin directory.

3. Set the file permissions on the CGI script file and directories to be 'chmod 755.' If you use an FTP program to transfer files, right-click on the file and select change file attributes. Using Ws_FTP Pro, enter 755 under numeric value.

4. If you are still getting errors, you can instruct the server to display any errors messages to the web browser by adding the following line near the top of the Perl script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

5. Double-check any changes you have made to the script and also ensure the following line appears after the perl path:
print "Content-type: text/html\nn";

6. Ensure that the perl modules you require for your script is supported on the Skynetinfo plan. For a list of the currently supported Perl modules, please click here