I have searched, read, and printed out all the info on setting up dbman on Windows. And, thanks to your wonderful help, the demo is working just fine on our company WinNT server. I am now working on configuring the scripts using JPDemi's tutorial.

Here is the thing, I would like to work on this at home and on PWS (Personal web server), but I cannot get it to work! The problem is really strange: when I try to browse to the db.pl, it downloads the script and runs it, bringing up a small black DOS window, which disappears in less than a second. I do not get any errors in the browser itself, it just keeps downloading and running it in DOS.

Any ideas?

You might need to configure PWS to allow scripts to be run in the folder you have DBMAN in.

You can do this by opening PWS, and clicking the "Advanced" button on the left. Find your DBMAN directory and click "Edit Properties".

Make sure "Read", "Write", "Script Source Access" and "Execute" are all checked.

Hope this helps.

- Mark


Astro-Boy!!
http://www.zip.com.au/~astroboy/

After some unrelated trouble with my hard drive...

I did exactly as you said - PWS shows all three (read, execute, scripts) checked. When I browse to it, it still downloads and runs it. I will try to get the .cfg and .pl up somewhere where they can be seen. Any other thoughts? :(

Ok, you can see the two files now, db.pl is at:

http://www.empiregas.com/dbman/db.txt

and default.cfg is at:

http://www.empiregas.com/dbman/default.txt

I have been using IE5, but I also tried it in Netscape 4.7 and I get the same result - it asks where I want to save the download. I think the problem is with the settings somewhere in PWS - if you hadn't said that it was possible to run dbman in PWS, Astroboy, I would give up - but there must be a way! Please help if you have any other ideas...

1) Your perl path is incorrect in the db.cgi file. On most Windows servers, you do not need to define the Perl path. Some you have to, but I believe that with PWS, you don't need it...been awhile since I used it...I use Apache Win32 web server.

2) Some web servers have case sensitivity issues with folders and file names...try using:



3) The following is incorrect in your default.cfg file:



You should use the following:



OR simply:



4) Check to make sure that you have both .pl and .cgi set-up via the App Mappings in PWS to execute these file extensions and make sure that you have properly installed ActivePerl from http://www.activestate.com.

Good luck!


Regards,

Eliot Lee

Ok! Woo-hooo! I got it! After trying everything suggested above and still getting the same results, I gave up and actually went to the Microsoft support site and searched for perl and PWS and there it was!

Article Q231998 (I won't list the url - just search for it if you need to see it)

The article is titled - How to use Perl with Microsoft Personal Web Server on Windows 95/98

In the article, it tells you how to edit the registry to enable PWS to run Perl.exe

Works like a charm! :D Thanks for all your support! You did help by making sure the problem was not in my code and somewhere in the registry/associations. Yea!!!

Barbara