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POStandards for infrastructure in cgi-bin directory
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copied!<p>I'm maintaining some CGI web applications, which I'm migrating to a new Linux web server, on which I have a non-admin account, say <code>www_maintainer.</code> So I am installing the CGI applications inside <code>/home/www_maintainer/</code>, and I'd like to take the opportunity to clean things up, in particular the <code>cgi-bin/</code> directory could be better organized; I'd like to learn about a best-practice standard for that.</p> <p>For instance, is it normal to have subdirs called <code>bin/</code> and <code>lib/</code> inside <code>cgi-bin/</code>, with the binaries and libraries of auxiliary things? </p> <p>I will describe a specific example, namely with the math- and data plot application <a href="http://www.gnuplot.info" rel="nofollow">gnuplot</a> and its dependencies (libfontconfig, libpng , libgd, libjpeg, libreadline.so, ...).<br> Python could be another example (the distro provides 2.4 but I need >2.6), however I hope the admin can install 2.6 from a package so I don't have to worry about it.</p> <p>The new web server has <a href="https://www.scientificlinux.org/" rel="nofollow">Scientific Linux</a> (SL), which is based on Redhat RHEL. Unfortunately the distro repository for our current SL version does not provide gnuplot version 4.4 which I need, so it cannot be installed in the normal place like <code>/usr/bin/</code>, so I could build and install it and its dependencies in a non-system location, for example <code>cgi-bin/tools/</code>. The actual CGI web applications are binary executables launched by the scripts <code>launch1.sh</code> or <code>launch2.sh</code>. </p> <p>Here is a illustration of the directory tree and some of the files in there (many dirs and files omitted of course).</p> <pre><code>cd /home/www_maintainer/www_root/ |-- html/ | |-- index.html | `-- info.html |-- cgi-bin/ | |-- gen/ | | |-- status.sh* | | `-- sybase/ | | `-- DataAccess64/ | | `-- ODBC/ | | |-- lib/ | | |-- samples/ | | `-- spl/ | |-- exe1/ | | `-- launch1.sh* | |-- exe2/ | | `-- launch2.sh* | |-- javascript/ | | `-- check-input.js | |-- scripts/ | | |-- decode.pl* | | |-- generate-random-string.bash* | | |-- gnuplot -> ../tools | | `-- upload.php* | |-- tools | | |-- bin/ | | | |-- gnuplot* | | | |-- python -> python2.6 | | | |-- python-config -> python2.6-config | | | |-- python2.6* | | | |-- python2.6-config* | | | `-- xmlwf* | | |-- etc | | | `-- fonts/ | | |-- include/ | | |-- info/ | | |-- lib/ | | | |-- libfontconfig.so | | | |-- libpdf.so | | | |-- libreadline.so | | | |-- libpng15.so | | | |-- libpng15.so | | | |-- pkgconfig/ | | | |-- libpng.so | | | |-- libjpeg.so | | | |-- libreadline.so | | |-- libexec/ | | |-- man/ | | `-- share/ |-- tests/ | `-- results/ | `-- info/ | |-- readme.pdf | `-- readme.html |-- fonts/ |-- index.html -> html/index.html |-- log/ | `-- log.txt `-- tmp -> /tmp/ </code></pre> <p><br> Would it be better to install outside the <code>www_root</code>, e.g.in the directory <code>/home/www_maintainer/bin/</code> and <code>/home/www_maintainer/lib/</code> and configure the web server to allow that?</p>

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