ERROR: Could not connect to /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/webinator/db

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Thunderstone
Site Admin
Posts: 2504
Joined: Wed Jun 07, 2000 6:20 pm

ERROR: Could not connect to /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/webinator/db

Post by Thunderstone »



Dear Sir/Madam,

just trying to get the webinator product up and running on our sunos
4.1.3 sparc 10.

I registered at your website, got a verification, then downloaded your
sunos compressed tar file. (Actually had to abort the original download
from the web browser at registration time due to timeout problems, so
ftp'd the file from ftp.thuderstone.com a couple of days later - hop ethi
sdoesn't cause registration problems - see later).

Then installed the webinator product as per instructions contained in the
instructions file gw.tex. The files were installed under the webman user
(who owns the web directories) and the gw setuid to root later (see
below).

Our cgi-bin progs live as default in /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin and the
served web doc tree starts at /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs.

The httpd runs as root on our machine - lpss1.ing.iac.es (161.72.6.2) -
hence I followed the instructions post installation to:

chown root gw
chmod u+s gw

Then did a site index gw http://ing.iac.es
gw -index

then in our web-browser entred the URL:

http://ing.iac.es/cgi-bin/webinator

the error message that came back was:

ERROR: Could not connect to /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/webinator/db

and the search failed. Any idea what I might have done wrong during the
installation process?

Yours, Nic Walton

==========================================================================
Dr N.A. Walton Tel: +34 22 405637 (mountain)
Isaac Newton Group Tel: +34 22 425440 (sea level office)
Royal Greenwich Observatory FAX: +34 22 405646 (mountain - INT)
Apartado 321 FAX: +34 22 425401 (sea level office)
38780 Santa Cruz de La Palma WWW: http://ing.iac.es/~naw
The Canary Islands, SPAIN email: naw@ing.iac.es
==========================================================================

User avatar
Thunderstone
Site Admin
Posts: 2504
Joined: Wed Jun 07, 2000 6:20 pm

ERROR: Could not connect to /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/webinator/db

Post by Thunderstone »




Your web server is probably not really running as root even though he may
start it. The httpd.conf contains a line similar to "User nobody" . That
is the user ("nobody" in this case) that the web server runs as.
This is the user you should have used in the chown/chmod above.