Enabling KShell CGI in IIS

 

IIS isn't just for ASP. Aside from ASP, ASP.NET, PHP and Perl, there are numerous other more esoteric languages that can be used to build interactive content. Here's how do enable the Korn Shell language on your IIS machinewww.tartoos.com

OK, so you have something written for the Unix Korn Shell, but you want it to run on your IIS machine. Well, the first thing you need is a Korn Shell interpreter. You'll find one included with Services For Unix, which MSDN subscribers have access to. Install SFU, and you'll have an interpreter ready to go. Now what you need to do is set up IIS to pass your CGI information to itwww.tartoos.com

So, crack open the IIS console, go to your website and get properties/home directory, as below

Then, pop open the 'configuration' screen

Add a new mapping, like so

I'm using the file extension 'ksh', but you can use whatever you like. the file path, on my system is as follows :

C:\WINNT\system32\posix.exe /u /c /bin/ksh -l %s %s

Hit OK, get yourself back out of the IIS comsole and knock up this quick script

function helloworld {

    echo "Content-type:text/html\n\n"

         echo "Hello World"

}

helloworld

exit

Save it as 'helloworld.ksh', and save it in a cgi-bin directory, or other directory with execute permissions.

When you run it, you should get a 'Hello World' message, which will indicate everything is working as planned. I've found that there seems to be a slight problem with some machines in certain configurations, however the error messages generated are generally weasy enough to decipher, allowing you to fix it up if your system is one of the unlucky ones!