Question

I'm having trouble bringing up a new TWiki installation.

Most commands work OK, including edit and preview. However, the all-important view script won't run. The symptom is that the script hangs forever, with no output or error messages. What seems to happen is that when the script tries to run RCS, it hangs. I created a small test script that just runs "/usr/bin/rlog -h" from Perl, and prints the output. It has taint checking enabled, and it runs fine from the command line. But when I run it through Apache, it hangs just like TWiki's view command.

It smells like an Apache configuration problem. I disabled suexec, and that didn't resolve it.

Testenv is working OK, and doesn't seem to report anything unusual. See http://www.myfavoritegames.com/twiki/bin/testenv

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! .

• TWiki version: 01 Dec 2000
• Web server: Apache 1.3.9 with mod_perl
• Server OS: Linux Red Hat 6.1

-- TWikiGuest - 21 Aug 2001

Not yet an answer

Have you tried running your test script as the "apache" user?.

-- EdgarBrown - 21 Aug 2001

Yes. Apache is running as "nobody". If I "su nobody", the test script runs fine from the shell.

-- TWikiGuest - 23 Aug 2001

A debugging suggestion:

Try changing the $revHistCmd to something else. i.e. a little perl wrapper that gives you some debugging information, it seems odd to me that this is the only rcs command that is failing, but wierder things are possible in the software universe.

-- EdgarBrown - 26 Aug 2001

It's not just rlog, or even just RCS, that fails. I can't seem to run any commands from perl through Apache using the back-quote construct (for example, I tried something like $tmp = `/bin/ls` in the script described above, and it fails, too). However, everything runs fine from the command line, even when I'm the apache user. It also works OK through Apache if I use the exec() command.

I tried enabling mod_perl, and that hasn't made any difference.

-- TWikiGuest - 29 Aug 2001

Answer

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