Platforms Affected: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000

Issue: When accessing any Discus CGI script (typically ending in .cgi or .pl), the text "Content-type: text/html" appears on top of the page. This breaks, among other things, the frame set upon trying to enter administration and the operation of cookies on the board. And, it just plain doesn't look good.

Resolution: Active State Perl has essentially 2 modes of operation on a Windows platform. It can either run scripts through the perl.exe interpreter, or it can run the scripts through a Windows-specific DLL library called perlis.dll. Discus is a platform-independent application that runs on both unix and Windows servers through the stock Perl binary (perl.exe), but it does not function correctly when running through perlis.dll.

The solution to the problem is to have the Discus scripts execute through the Perl binary rather than the perlis.dll library. Exactly how this is done will depend on the web host.

Configure the server

If you control your own server, you can configure your server to execute scripts with the CGI extension you've chosen through the Perl binary. Here are instructions for IIS, which typically is the only server that gets set up this way.

Change the CGI extension (version 4.0 and above)

The following is UNSUPPORTED, and we strongly recommend that you contact your web host before doing this, so you do not do a whole lot of unnecessary work.

1. Rename all of the *.cgi scripts with a different extension (e.g., *.pl) manually using your FTP program. The Discus CGI scripts are in the Discus script directory, typically found under cgi-bin/discus.

2. Edit discus.conf and change the line that says cgi_extension=... to include the proper CGI extension that you have now instituted. The discus.conf file is in the administration directory, typically named discus_admin_###########.

3. Edit the index.html file associated with the board and fix the link that previously pointed to the script using the old extension. This file is found in the Discus HTML directory, typically named "discus" - and this directory also contains folders named "clipart" and "icons" and "messages".