Question

I'm getting an error in configure

Warning: You are running configure with mod_perl. This is risky because mod_perl will remember 
old values of configuration variables. You are *highly* recommended not to run configure under 
mod_perl (though the rest of TWiki can be run with mod_perl, of course) 

Sure. But. How do I turn it off just for one script?

Environment

-- VickiBrown - 20 Nov 2007

Answer

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Define an extra rule in your Apache configuration which just matches configure, like the following which I stole from Kenneth's excellent TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator. The SetHandler directive does the trick!

# Limit access to configure to specific IP addresses and or users.
# Make sure configure is not open to the general public.
# It exposes system details that can help attackers.
<FilesMatch "^(configure)$">
    SetHandler cgi-script
    Order Deny,Allow
    Allow from all
</FilesMatch>

That said: I challenge the significance of that warning, or at least the wording anyway. If you are running TWiki under mod_perl, then you have to restart your Apache server after every configuration change. Otherwise all running processes will continue to use the old configuration, while new ones might use the new configuration (depending on whether you compile in mod_perl's startup routine).

But if you restart after a configuration change, it does not matter at all whether you ran configure under mod_perl or not.

-- HaraldJoerg - 21 Nov 2007