If you have any questions that are not answered here, feel free to e-mail me at "hoagland@cs.ucdavis.edu".
If you feel you have something to contribute to this FAQ, please place it here.
2. After submitting I form to Getcomments, I get a message starting with "could not chdir
". What's up?
3. After submitting I form to Getcomments, I get a message starting with "could not open count
". I do not have the above problem though. What's going wrong?
4. <something> works when I try running getcomments.pl from the command line, but doesn't work when I do it from the form. Why is this?
Getcomments Possibilities Questions
1. Will Getcomments run on a non-Unix machine?
2. Can I have different users/forms use the same Getcomments script?
Miscellaneous Questions
1. Somebody asked: If I make the directory in which getcomments resides readable/writeable to the outside world in order to facilitate the writing of comments, is this directory not wide open to anything the outside world cares to do? In other words, how do I protect my HTML and other files from vandals?
which perl
" might work.
2. Your _comment_dir field is not set properly. Set it to the actual location (not URL) of your comment directory.
3. It sounds like your file permissions are wrong somewhere. The files that Getcomments changes need to be writeable by whatever user/group your server runs as when accessing pages. So make sure your comment directory has the "x" bit set for the world (try "chmod +x <comment dir>") and your "count" file has the "w" bit set for the world (try "chmod +w count")
4. It sounds like your file permissions are wrong somewhere. Remember that the permissions need to be set for user/group your server runs as when accessing pages, or the world. The configuration "out of the box" should be correct.
2. Certainly. Just set up the control fields and format files of different forms to each situation.
As a researcher in computer security I would say there is reason to take note of the situation and it is good that you are interested. However you probably don't need to worry too much. If as is the default setup, the only thing in the publicly writeable directory is the comments and the count of the number of comments, the degree of potential damage is limited. Possible bad happenings from the outside: 1) New files being added to the directory. The means by which to do this are limited presently, however theoretically possible. 2) Garbage added to the comments file. This can be done through legitimate means. After all, when you ask for comments, you invite people to append their text to your file. 3) Files being deleted in the directory. Similar to 1). If you are real concerned, make backups regularly. Threats from people who have accounts on your system or crackers that have broken into your system are more realistic as any of the 3 things above can easily be achieved. Unfortunately, under UNIX there really isn't anything that can be done.