having serious problems getting a python CGI to work

Tue Jun 1 01:48:44 EDT 2004

I am having a lot of problems trying to get a Python CGI to run.
I have included 3 parts...

1) A simple stripped down python module.
2) An output of what I get when I do:   python index.py
    (which not suprisingly should generate HTML output,  and it does)
3) And the "error_log" output from the "server error" I get when I run 
it
    by typing in:   http://localhost/cgi-bin/index.py

I'm running this on a Mac OS-X 10.3.3 Server.

This is a snippit of the source module

#!/usr/bin/python2.3
#Last revision 2003-08-19
#"index.py": page/dispatcher/security envelope for all Python routines

import cgitb; cgitb.enable()
import sys
sys.stderr=sys.stdout
from cgi import escape
from os import environ

print """Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"\n"""
try:
	cmd=environ["PATH_INFO"]+"?"+environ["QUERY_STRING"]
except:
	cmd="/welcome"

#Warning: Keep this text short so that the "<html " element is not 
pushed
#  past the first 256 bytes of the output (not counting HTTP header).
print """<!--This is my test web page with frames -->
"""
if cmd[:2]!="//":
	print """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>"""
#The presense of a valid DOCTYPE line breaks IE 6.0 and Mozilla,
#    but omitting it puts them into quirks/compatibility mode.
#    Specifically, it adds a white border on the frame under IE 5.1 
(Mac).
#print """<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">"""
	print """<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
   <head>
     <title>My Test Page</title>
   </head>"""
#FRAMESET has no border attribute, however it helps IE and Opera.
	print """  <frameset rows="132,*" border="0">
     <frame src="/CGI-Executables/index.py//toppane" frameborder="0" 
name="topframe" noresize="noresize" scrolling="no" />
     <frame src="/CGI-Executables/index.py/%s" frameborder="0" 
name="bottomframe" />
     <noframes>
       <body>This requires frames to use</body>
     </noframes>
   </frameset>

This is what I would type to first test the CGI module.
And as expected I get the xml code back,  as you see below.

sh-2.05b# python index.py
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"

<!--This is my test web page with frames -->

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>My Test Page</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="132,*" border="0">
<frame src="/CGI-Executables/index.py//toppane" frameborder="0" 
name="topframe" noresize="noresize" scrolling="no" />
<frame src="/CGI-Executables/index.py//welcome" frameborder="0" 
name="bottomframe" />
<noframes>
<body>This requires frames to use</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>

This is the output of the apache "error_log" file I get.

error] (2)No such file or directory: exec of 
/Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/index.py failed
[Mon May 31 22:05:09 2004] [error] [client 192.168.1.250] Premature end 
of script headers: /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/index.py

-------

NOTE:   I Set the chmod flags to 755 - made sure execute privelages are 
set.
Running as "root".

Question:  What does a "Premature end of script headers" mean.  This 
message is very
confusing.   What would normally cause this?

Why would I get:  "No such file or directory" exec of ....  failed?   I 
DID set the
"x" bits on the file.  What ELSE could I be doing wrong?

John