Different results for command line and CGI for perl web form script

Question

The code for my sub:

sub put_file
{
    my($host, $placement_directory, $tar_directory, $filename, $user, $pass) = @_;
    my $ftp = Net::FTP->new($host) or die "cannot connect to localhost";

    $ftp->login($user, $pass) or die "cannot log in";

    $ftp->cwd($placement_directory);
    print $tar_directory."/".$filename;
    $ftp->put("$tar_directory/$filename") or die "cannot put file ", $ftp->message;

    print "File has been placed \n";
}

So when this sub is called from a test script(that runs from command line) that uses the same config file and does all of the same things as the CGI script, no errors are found and the file is placed correctly. When the sub is called from my CGI script the script will output the $tar_directory."/".$filename but not "File has been placed \n" and the ftp->message outputs "cannot put file Directory successfully changed." Which seems to come from the cwd line before it.

Other info: I have tried running the test script as multiple users with the same result. I use strict and warnings. The tar file that is being moved is created by the script.

I'm new to perl so any advice is helpful because I'm stuck on this and cant find any help using the power of The Google.

It seems that your web server have no permission to read from $tar_directory. — gangabass
The folder permissions for the specific directory allows all users to read from the folder. Would it fail if higher up directories did not have permissions? — wDroter
It could fail if the higher up directories did not have sufficient permissions. — sorpigal
All directories have read and write permissions. If anyone has an explanation to why ftp->message does not have relevant message, I am very curious about that. — wDroter

jimtut jimtut · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-01T17:00:27

Just a guess. Your ftp->put is failing, triggering the die. Unless you have:

use CGI::Carp qw(carpout fatalsToBrowser);

you won't see the die message in your browser. Since you died, you don't see the final print statement either.

Check your webserver log for the die output, or just change "die" to "print".

Different results for command line and CGI for perl web form script

2 Answers