How to run CGI scripts on Nginx

28
votes

I have problem setting up CGI scripts to be run on Nginx, so far I've found http://wiki.nginx.org/SimpleCGI this stuff but problem is that I can't make perl script run as service so that it will run in background and even in case of restart it will start running automatically

Do you have any idea? I'm running Centos 5

I've found some solutions here but I couldn't integrate code given there with this Perl script I'm completely zero at Perl, please help me Thanks

5
perlnginxcgicentos
Since you're "zero at Perl" consider writing your CGI in C instead. Perl has some serious disadvantages like it needs to be compiled every time it's used and it's usually hard to understand unless you're a perl junkie. If your program is compiled C stdin comes from the browser, stdout goes to the browser, it's also tiny and efficient. I'll put in a plug for one of my own programs, look at jbe.c in it, that's what compiles into the CGI program jbe. sourceforge.net/projects/cgi-jukebox – Alan Corey

5 Answers

23
votes

Nginx doesn't have native CGI support (it supports fastCGI instead). The typical solution for this is to run your Perl script as a fastCGI process and edit the nginx config file to re-direct requests to the fastCGI process. This is quite a complex solution if all you want to do is run a CGI script.

Do you have to use nginx for this solution? If all you want to do is execute some Perl CGI scripts, consider using Apache or Lighttpd as they come with CGI modules which will process your CGI scripts natively and don't require the script to be run as a separate process. To do this you need install the web server and edit the web server config file to load the CGI module. For Lighttpd, you will need to add a line in the config file to enable processing of CGI files. Then put the CGI files into the cgi-bin folder.

15
votes

Install another web server(Apache, Lighttpd) that runs on different port. Then proxy your CGI request to the webserver with nginx.

You just need to add this to nginx configuration, after installed a web server on 8080

location /cgi-bin {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
}

Take a look at Nginx Location Directive Explained for more details.

13
votes

Nginx is a web server. You need to use an application server for your task, such as uWSGI for example. It can talk with nginx using its native very effective binary interface called uwsgi.

5
votes

I found this hack using FastCGI to be a little nicer than running another web server. http://nginxlibrary.com/perl-fastcgi/

2
votes

I found this: https://github.com/ruudud/cgi It says:

===

On Ubuntu: apt-get install nginx fcgiwrap
On Arch: pacman -S nginx fcgiwrap

Example Nginx config (Ubuntu: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default):

server {
    listen   80;
    server_name  localhost;
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log;

    location / {
        root /srv/static;
        autoindex on;
        index index.html index.htm;
    }

    location ~ ^/cgi {
        root /srv/my_cgi_app;
        rewrite ^/cgi/(.*) /$1 break;

        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /srv/my_cgi_app$fastcgi_script_name;
    }
}

Change the root and fastcgi_param lines to a directory containing CGI scripts, e.g. the cgi-bin/ dir in this repository.

If you are a control freak and run fcgiwrap manually, be sure to change fastcgi_pass accordingly. The path listed in the example is the default in Ubuntu when using the out-of-the-box fcgiwrap setup.

===

I'm about to try it.