CHEBUCTO CONNECTIONS TIPS FOR POWER USERS

CGI scripts

Welcome to the second Tips for Power Users column. In this column we will talk about CGI scripts and how they affect you, as a CCN user.

What they are

CGI-bin scripts have added a new dimension to the WorldWideWeb. That dimension is interaction. CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, and is a way of running programs on a remote server. A CGI script on a WWW server in Tasmania could, for example, process a form, print the current local time, or even run a program on that server. Many other things are also possible with CGI.

How does this affect me?

CGI is of particular interest on the Chebucto Community Net. Chebucto Community Net runs on top of a WWW interface and a user must be logged in to run programs that are made available through the 'lynxexec:' gateway (example: Pine email). However, all Word Wide Web users can use the CGI programs that do not share this restriction. While CCN users may not place CGI programs of their own in the cgi-bin directory where they will be able to run them, they may use the programs made available by the CCN system administrators.

Any WWW user in the world, including you, can run scripts on CCN's server, using an http://www.ccn·cs·dal·ca/cgi-bin/ link. For example, to run the finger script, you would use the URL http://www.ccn·cs·dal·ca/cgi-bin/finger. There are a few gems in this directory, and I'll describe them briefly here.

Please note, not all of these programs are officially supported by CCN. As a power user, you should be able to figure out how to use them by yourself.

The "gems"

calendar: asks you for a month and year, then displays formatted calendar
date: outputs the current date and time, in case that you forget
finger: allows you to finger a specific account from CCN. You press the / key and then enter an email address, for example someone@somehost.somewhere.net.
imagemap: allows you to include imagemaps in your homepage -- at least, I think so. More on this in a later column, after I figure it out.
mf2: creates a mail form for you. This script provides a better interface than the mailto link. To use it, put an URL like http://www.ccn·cs·dal·ca/cgi-bin/mf2?TO=aa529@ccn·cs·dal·ca&SUBJECT=Hello in one of your Web pages.
sleep: makes your session pause for 10 minutes (600 seconds). And no, I didn't find this out the hard way! 8-)
uptime: displays the current time, the time since the last reboot, the number of users currently online, and the system load average
urlstats: can be used to find out the number of hits yesterday, last month and so far this month for a specified page. To find out how many times your pages have been "hit", use the URL http://www.ccn·cs·dal·ca/cgi-bin?ME. To find out how many times the pages of user zz999 have been hit, use the URL http://www.ccn·cs·dal·ca/cgi-bin/urlstats?~zz999. More complete documentation on urlstats is available at the Help Desk.
verify_links: This utility will check for broken links, starting at a specific URL and searching downward through link hierarchies until it reaches the end of a specified "search radius".

In the next column

That's all for now. Next month, we'll talk about some advanced features of HTML, including imagemaps (that is, if I can figure them out!).

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Chebucto Connections TIPS FOR POWER USERS
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Last Month: July 1995 Next Month: October 1995