Subject: Announcing safecgiperl beta1
From: [email-masked] (Malcolm Beattie)
Date: 2 Nov 1995 16:40:47 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc

Announcing safecgiperl beta1.

This distribution is intended to be installed on a World Wide Web
server and allows CGI programs written in Perl5 to be run in a
sanitised environment. It makes use of the Safe extension module for
Perl5--any attempted unsafe operation in the CGI program is trapped
and causes a fatal compile-time error. Wrappers and utility functions
for useful but potentially unsafe operations (such as opening files
and sending mail) can be written in (unrestricted) perl and then
shared with the sanitised compartment.

Pre-requisites are perl5.001m and the Safe extension module.
Earlier patchlevels of perl5.001 than perl5.001m are possible but
not recommended. The Safe extension module is available from its
home site as ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/perl/Safe-b2.tar.gz or from
perl mirror sites.

The safecgiperl distribution contains two programs (a small C program to
be run setuid root by the web server and a perl program cgiperl which
creates a sanitised Safe compartment in which to run the CGI program)
and a bit of documentation.

Availability: ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/perl/safecgiperl-b1.tar.gz

--Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Beattie <[email-masked]>
Oxford University Computing Services
"Widget. It's got a widget. A lovely widget. A widget it has got." --Jack Dee