Rant about CGI

Underachieving Hobbyist Laments How Hard It Is Nowadays To Let The
Internet Run Arbitrary Commands On His Server.

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/guides/cloud/vps.org b/guides/cloud/vps.org
index 4315c44..1fcf1ca 100644
--- a/guides/cloud/vps.org
+++ b/guides/cloud/vps.org
@@ -170,3 +170,19 @@ $ sudo systemctl restart nginx
 # Make fail2ban notice the new log file.
 $ sudo systemctl restart fail2ban
 #+end_src
+
+** CGI
+I like the idea of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface#Using_CGI_scripts][CGI "scripts"]], i.e. having the web server fire a
+program to handle requests:
+
+- URI bits are passed through environment variables and stdin;
+- the program spits the page on stdout.
+
+Had some fun toying with Python's ~cgi~ module; sadly though the
+project has [[https://peps.python.org/pep-0594/#cgi][decided to deprecate it]].  The docs [[https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/cgi.html][suggest some migration
+paths]], and there's a [[https://pypi.org/project/legacy-cgi/][legacy-cgi package on PyPI]] if I really want to
+keep using it I guess.
+
+Also nginx has no support for CGI either, though their documentation
+explains how to combine their FastCGI support with ~fcgiwrap~ to
+enable CGI scripts.