CGI wrapper mode - base path problems

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1

I have a perplexing problem with CGI wrapper mode (Virtualmin 3.92.gpl running on Ubuntu 10.04 on a VPS). It worked fine previously on Ubuntu 8.04, but after hours of research I just can’t make it work since the OS upgrade. FastCGI works fine for a while but gradually exhausts all available memory (seems to be a known problem) and mod_php also works fine but causes file permission problems with some scripts (also a known problem).

The main symptom with CGI wrapper is that pages are displayed without any styling. Essentially the problem seems to be that scripts think they are running in /cgi-bin instead of /public_html. Generally I do NOT see warnings in any log files but when I do, they are looking for a non-existent file in /cgi-bin. In Drupal I can work around the problem to some extent by setting $base_url in settings.php. In Joomla I can fix it to some extent by setting $live_site in configuration.php. But I still have unresolved problems in Wordpress (permission denied in admin) and Magento, for example.

Virtualmin was installed using install.sh and seems to be configured correctly - for example, /etc/apache2/suexec/www-data has the expected contents. I’ve tried setting all site file permissions to 755 (or 777). I’ve tried setting and unsetting cgi.fix_pathinfo and cgi.force_redirect (and checked that they really do take effect, 'cos it’s easy to edit them in the wrong place or forget to apply the change). I’ve tried a “clean” installation of a virtual server. Nothing seems to make any difference.

I found many reports of similar problems but the threads all end with no resolution or a solution that doesn’t work for me. It should be easy to reproduce - clean install Virtualmin on Ubuntu Lucid, install Drupal or Joomla or Wordpress in CGI wrapper mode and you’ll immediately see problems.

2

Howdy,

We’ve been seeing some rather bizarre behaviors from PHP 5.3 when running in CGI mode.

Using mod_php and FCGID don’t have those same issues.

Essentially, PHP’s SCRIPT_NAME and PHP_SELF variables are set to what we feel are incorrect value’s in certain circumstances – which causes issues like what you’er seeing.

Editing $HOME/etc/php.ini, and setting cgi.fix_pathinfo to “0” does fix that issue for a lot of people, but it’s not a complete fix – and it also introduces new problems to do so.

After weeks of digging into this, we did finally find a workaround that will be implemented in the next Virtualmin version.

In the meantime, I’ve been using this on some of my servers:

  • Create a file “/etc/php5/conf.d/cgi_fix.ini” with the following contents:

auto_prepend_file = /etc/php5/cgi_fix.php

  • Create a file “/etc/php5/cgi_fix.php” with the following contents:
<?php if (ini_get("cgi.fix_pathinfo") != 1) { $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; $_ENV["SCRIPT_NAME"] = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; } elseif (! isset($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])) { 
    $current_url = "";

    if (isset($_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL'])) {
            $current_url = $_SERVER['REDIRECT_URL'];
    }
    else {  
            $current_url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
    }

    $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] = $current_url;
    $_ENV["SCRIPT_NAME"] = $current_url;

    $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] = $current_url;
    $_ENV["PHP_SELF"] = $current_url;

}
?>
3

I thought it must be something like that. I’ll give the patch a try, many thanks (or use the Virtualmin update, whichever happens soonest!).