[pmwiki-users] help needed - URL structure (take 2 :)

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Thu Sep 29 14:07:27 CDT 2005


On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 02:00:18PM -0400, Constantin Basturea wrote:
> > I'm guessing that one or more of the following has happened:
> >    - Apache was upgraded (e.g., from 1.3 to 2.0)
> >    - PHP was upgraded
> >    - The Apache or PHP configuration has been changed
> >    - PHP has been switched to run in "CGI" mode instead of as an
> >      Apache handler
> 
> I asked my webhost if they made any changes in Apache/PHP
> version/settings, and here's what he responded:
> 
> "PHP now runs as you, rather than as the web server. This means files
> created by PHP will be owned by you. It also means that if you need to
> store your MySQL (and hence your main account) password in a file in
> order to connect to a database, you can store it in a file that's only
> readable by you. This is an important security measure."

They are absolutely correct that this is an important security
improvement -- I wish more sites would do this.

However, it appears that in changing the Apache settings that
the PATH_INFO component of urls is no longer working per the
CGI 1.1 specification.  The PATH_INFO part of CGI means that
given a url such as 

   http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Home

the value "/Main/Home" is placed in the PATH_INFO environment
variable when the CGI script (pmwiki.php) is called.  Unfortunately,
the current Apache settings on your server seem to be refusing to 
serve up the url at all and are simply returning a blank document.

Often this can be fixed in Apache 2.0 by setting the AcceptPathInfo 
directive to "On" in the apache configuration -- without this
Apache 2 will generally return a "404 Not Found" for urls containing
PATH_INFO data.  If that doesn't work (or isn't an option),
then we'll need to see about using mod_rewrite to get things to
work.

Pm




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