Topic awaiting preservation: Perl page editing

I'm planning to set up a remote editing system on my site. At school, I can only get at it by html, so I wrote a perl script to allow me to edit the page. However, despite the fact that all the pages are owned by the same person who owns the cgi script, opening it in order to open it doesn't work. I need to allow write access to "other" (eg. chown 666 *file*). However, to do this to my entire server seems a little insecure, but I don't really have any other choice due to the lameness of my school... any ideas?

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

Can you set it up to use a database that you can modify, and then have the pages dynamically generated from the database?

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Website

Uh, in theory I suppose I could...I suppose it amounts to laziness and lack of expertise, but I really don't think I'd be able to do that in a reasonable time frame (I go back to school on monday :\). I'll have a look at it, but it just seems like I mst be doing something silly here, and there ought to be a better way round it

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

(Edited by wrayal on 04-16-2005 23:32)

A database might be a good way to go, and hey, if you want a job for the web, the sooner you learn them, the more experience you'll have...

Otherwise, how exactly are you modifying the files? Are you allowing yourself *direct* access to each file, to be written? If so, that's a bad idea for various reasons... ignoring that, though, shouldn't it be possible to make the files ONLY group/owner writable, such that it can only be written to by that Perl script, instead of by *anyone*?

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Website

Heh, I'm not planning on being a web developer - I do this for fun . My so-called "skills" lie elsewhere....so for me it's just a way of getting it done.
"*direct* access"? Depends quite what you mean, but I've checked all the possible security issues, and as far as I can see it's as secure a way as any other.
The file and cgi script are owned by "wrayal", and yet writing is only possible if write permissions are given to "other"...

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

I'm a little confused, why do you have to chown the whole folder?

Also you could protect some stuff with a .htacess file for some tricks.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

Woops, that shoulda been "chmod 666 *file*"
But still, it's because each file that I edit this way would need to be writable by "other", so every one I wanted to edit would need to be set as such....

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

ah I wouldn't really worry about it personally



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

just set the whole damn lot to "666"?

...I'm suspicious of that number

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

Again, why 666? Why not 644? o.O

Heh, or does it even matter? I guess if you're the only one on the server...

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Website

(Edited by Iron Wallaby on 04-17-2005 06:16)

IW: eek, sorry thanks. One of these days I should sleep for the entire day to make up for my.... 'interesting' sleep patterns recently. Just, I was talking to a friend, who said that there were http delete and upload functions... ?! That could be bad if I need to give write access to "Other". Well, let's see what happens...

[edit]hmm...wait, no - it's "other" that needs _write_ access, so it'd have to be something like chmod 646 surely?

Thanks for all your help guys!

Wrayal

Meh, one day I'll have a website worth seeing...honest

(Edited by wrayal on 04-17-2005 14:53)