[Mailman-Users] thttpd?

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "JS" == Justin Sheehy <justin at iago.org> writes:

    JS> The Apache "ScriptAlias" directive and its relations, which
    JS> Mailman seems to assume will be in operation, cause some other
    JS> interesting behavior.

    JS> If you are using Apache and follow the INSTALL, you end up
    JS> doing something like:

    JS> ScriptAlias /mailman/ /home/mailman/cgi-bin/

    JS> This has more of an effect than simply allowing CGI scripts to
    JS> run from that directory.  It also does some magic with the
    JS> URLs that match that pattern.  If one tries to GET, say,
    JS> /mailman/listinfo/somelist, Apache does not try to run
    JS> /home/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/somelist, but instead runs
    JS> /home/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo, and provides the rest of the
    JS> URL ("somelist") to /home/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo as an
    JS> argument.

    JS> I don't believe that this is part of the CGI spec in any way.

Really?  I think the CGI/1.1 "spec" (which really never got past draft
status) description of SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO definitely allow for
Apache's behavior here.  Although SCRIPT_NAME's calculation is
technically "implementation dependent", PATH_INFO is required to
contain the url portion from SCRIPT_NAME up to any QUERY_STRING.  I
don't see anything in a quick scan of the CGI/1.2 spec that
contradicts this either.

What does thttpd actually set SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO to when given
a url like http://mysite.com/mailman/listinfo/mylist?

    JS> The use of this behavior makes Mailman unable to work on a
    JS> simple webserver that correctly implements CGI.

I disagree.  Plus if the CGI/1.1 spec is supposed to "define current
practice", I'd actually be floored if it didn't jive with Apache's
behavior, given that it's been the most popular web server for years.

-Barry