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# Deploying Pyblosxom with CGI

## Summary

You can run Pyblosxom as a CGI script with many web servers. This document covers setting Pyblosxom up as a CGI script.

## Dependencies

You need an account on a web server configured to run CGI scripts. It helps to know how to run CGI scripts on that server, too.

## Deployment

1. Copy the `pyblosxom.cgi` file from the blog directory (the directory which you created with `pyblosxom-cmd create ./blog/`) into your CGI directory.

2. Edit the `pyblosxom.cgi` file.

   The top of the file looks something like this

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       #!/usr/bin/env python

       # -u turns off character translation to allow transmission
       # of gzip compressed content on Windows and OS/2
       #!/path/to/python -u

       import os, sys

       # Uncomment this line to add the directory your config.py file is
       # in to the python path:
       #sys.path.append("/path/to/directory/")

   Make sure the first line points to a valid python interpreter. If you’re using virtualenv, then make sure it points to the python interpreter in the virtual environment.

   Uncomment the `sys.path.append("/path/to/directory/")` line and make sure the path being appended is the directory that your `config.py` file is in.

4. Make sure the `pyblosxom.cgi` file has the correct permissions and ownership for running a CGI script in this directory for the server that you’re using.

5. Make sure your blog directory has the correct permissions for being read by the process executing your CGI script.

6. Run your `pyblosxom.cgi` script by doing:

       % ./pyblosxom.cgi test

   If that doesn’t work, double-check to make sure you’ve completed the above steps, then check the trouble-shooting section below, then ask for help on IRC or the users mailing list. More details in Project details, contact information, and where to go for help.

If that does work, then try to run the CGI script from your web browser. The url is dependent on where you put the `pyblosxom.cgi` script and how CGI works on your web server.

## Trouble-shooting

We’re going to try to break this down a bit into categories. Bear with us and keep trying things.

If you have problems and have gone through this section to no avail, ask a question on the pyblosxom-users mailing list or ask us on IRC. Details for both of these are on the website.

### Running ./pyblosxom.cgi doesn’t work

First, you should check to see if you have the minimum requirements for Pyblosxom on your system. They’re listed in the Requirements section of the Install chapter. If not, then please install them.

If Python is installed on your system, make sure the first line in `pyblosxom.cgi` points to the correct Python interpreter. By default, `pyblosxom.cgi` uses `env` to execute the Python interpreter. In some rare systems, `/usr/bin/env` doesn’t exist or the system may have odd environment settings. In those cases, you may edit the first line to point to the Python interpreter directly. For example:

    #!/usr/bin/python

Then try running `./pyblosxom.cgi` again.

If Python is installed on your system and the first line of `pyblosxom.cgi` is correct, check for permissions issues. `pyblosxom.cgi` is a script, so it needs execute permission in order to function. If those aren’t set, then fix that and try running `./pyblosxom.cgi` again.

Check the error logs for your web server.

### I see a HTTP 404 error when I try to bring up my blog

When you try to look at your blog and you get a HTTP 404 error, then you’re using the wrong URL. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

- Are you using an `.htaccess` file?
- Does your server allow you to run CGI scripts?
- Do other CGI scripts in this directory work?
- Does the URL you’re trying to use to access Pyblosxom look like other URLs that work on your system?

### I see a HTTP 500 error when I try to bring up my blog

At this point, running `./pyblosxom.cgi` at the command prompt should work fine. If you haven’t done that and you’re busy trouble-shooting, go back and review the deployment instructions.

If the problem is with Pyblosxom and not your web server, then you should see a pretty traceback that will help you figure out what the specific problem is.

If the traceback and information doesn’t make any sense to you, ask a question on the pyblosxom-users mailing list or ask us on IRC. Details for both of these are on the website.

If you don’t see a traceback, then you either have a configuration problem with your web server or a configuration problem with Python. The first thing you should do is check your web server’s error logs. For Apache, look for the `error.log` file in a place like `/var/logs/apache/` or `/var/logs/httpd/`. If you don’t know where your web server’s error logs are, ask your system administrator.

Does the account your web server runs as have execute access to your `pyblosxom.cgi` script? If your web server does not have the permissions to read and execute your `pyblosxom.cgi` script, then your blog will not work.

Do you have plugins loaded? If you do, comment out the `load_plugins` setting in your `config.py` file so that Pyblosxom isn’t loading any plugins.

For example:

    py["load_plugins"] = ['plugina', 'pluginb', ...]

would get changed to:

    # commenting this out to see if it's a plugin problem
    # py["load_plugins"] = ['plugina', 'pluginb', ...]

Check to see if the problem persists. Sometimes there are issues with plugins that only show up in certain situations.

### I have other issues

Try changing the renderer for your blog to the debug renderer. You can do this by setting the `renderer` property in your `config.py` file to `debug`. For example:

    py["renderer"] = "debug"

That will show a lot more detail about your configuration, what the web server passes Pyblosxom in environment variables, and other data about your blog that might help you figure out what your problem is.

If that doesn’t help, ask a question on the pyblosxom-users mailing list or ask us on IRC. Details for both of these are on the website.

### UGH! My blog looks UGLY!

Check out Flavours and Templates.

### I hate writing in HTML!

That’s ok. Pyblosxom supports formatters and entry parsers which allow you to use a variety of markups for writing blog entries. See the documentation on Writing Entries for more information.

Check out Categories.

## Advanced installation

We encourage you not to try any of this until you’ve gotten a blog up and running.

This section covers additional advanced things you can do to your blog that will make it nicer. However, they’re not necessary and they’re advanced and we consider these things to be very much a “you’re on your own” kind of issue.

If you ever have problems with Pyblosxom and you ask us questions on the pyblosxom-users or pyblosxom-devel mailing lists, make sure you explicitly state what things you’ve done from this chapter. It’ll go a long way in helping us to help you.

## Renaming the pyblosxom.cgi script

In the default installation, the Pyblosxom script is named `pyblosxom.cgi`.

For a typical user on an Apache installation with user folders turned on, Pyblosxom URLs could look like this:

    http://example.com/~joe/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi
    http://example.com/~joe/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/an_entry.html
    http://example.com/~joe/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/dev/another_entry.html

That gets pretty long and it’s not very good looking. For example, telling the URL to your mother or best friend over the phone would be challenging. It would be nice if we could shorten and simplify it.

So, we have some options:

- Change the name of the `pyblosxom.cgi` script.
- And if that’s not good enough for you, use the Apache mod_rewrite module to get URLs internally redirected to the `pyblosxom.cgi` script.

Both methods are described here in more detail.

### Change the name of the pyblosxom.cgi script

There’s no reason that `pyblosxom.cgi` has to be named `pyblosxom.cgi`. Let’s try changing it `blog`. Now our example URLs look like this:

    http://example.com/~joe/cgi-bin/blog
    http://example.com/~joe/cgi-bin/blog/an_entry.html
    http://example.com/~joe/cgi-bin/blog/category1/another_entry.html

That’s better looking in the example. In your specific circumstances, that may be all you need.

You might have to change the `base_url` property in your `config.py` file to match the new URL.

Note

The `base_url` value should NOT have a trailing slash.

If you’re running on Apache, you might have to tell Apache that this is a CGI script even if it doesn’t have a `.cgi` at the end of it. If you can use `.htaccess` files to override Apache settings, you might be able to do something like this:

    # this allows execution of CGI scripts in this directory
    Options ExecCGI

    # if the user doesn't specify a file, then instead of doing the
    # regular directory listing, we look at "blog" (which is our
    # pyblosxom.cgi script renamed)
    DirectoryIndex blog

    # this tells Apache that even though "blog" doesn't end in .cgi,
    # it is in fact a CGI script and should be treated as such
    <Files blog>
    ForceType application/cgi-script
    SetHandler cgi-script
    </Files>

You may need to stop and restart Apache for your Apache changes to take effect.

### Hiding the .cgi with RewriteRule

Apache has a module for URL rewriting which allows you to convert incoming URLs to other URLs that can be handled internally. You can do URL rewriting based on all sorts of things. See the Apache manual for more details.

In our case, we want all incoming URLs pointing to `blog` to get rewritten to `cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi` so they can be handled by Pyblosxom. Then all our URLs will look like this:

    http://example.com/~joe/blog
    http://example.com/~joe/blog/an_entry.html
    http://example.com/~joe/blog/category1/another_entry.html

To do this, we create an .htaccess file (it has to be named exactly that) in our `public_html` directory (or wherever it is that `/~joe/` points to). In that file we have the following code:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule   ^blog?(.*)$   /~joe/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi$1   [last]

The first line turns on the Apache mod_rewrite engine so that it will rewrite URLs.

The second line has four parts. The first part denotes the line as a RewriteRule. The second part states the regular expression that matches the part of the URL that we want to rewrite. The third part denotes what we’re rewriting the URL to. The fourth part states that after this rule is applied, no future rewrite rules should be applied.

If you do URL rewriting, you may have to set the base_url property in your `config.py` accordingly. In the above example, the `base_url` would be `http://example.com/~joe/blog` with no trailing slash.

For more information on URL re-writing, see the mode_rewrite chapter in the Apache documentation for the version that you’re using.

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