Executing a Python script in Apache2

Question

I am trying to execute a Python program using Apache. However, Apache will only serve the file and not actually execute it. The permissions on the file are r/w/x and it is

Answer 1

The first line of httpd.conf: AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl is irrelevant, since you're testing python scripts and not perl scripts. And you should define those directives within the location of your python script, and tell apache that it should execute cgi scripts in that location: Options +ExecCGI. This snippet would be a start:

  Options +ExecCGI
  AddHandler cgi-script .py

Addendum 1:

As per my last comment, try this script. It should spit information about the cgi environment.

#!/usr/bin/python
import cgi
cgi.test()

Addendum 2:

I got your script to work with the above configuration. The problem is that script is written in python2. And the default interpreter apache is invoking to execute the script, is python3 (at least in my case, and chances are this would be the same for you too).

This is a python3 version of the hello world script:

#!/usr/bin/env python

# enable debugging
import cgitb
cgitb.enable()

print("Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8")
print()

print("Hello World!")

Addendum 3:

For the first error, make sure the permission and the ownership of whatever directory and files you're attempting to deploy are properly set. And try adding those directives to httpd.conf:

Order allow,deny
Allow from all

Which will get you this:

  Options +ExecCGI
  AddHandler cgi-script .py
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all

For the second error, unless I am missing something, it looks like apache is invoking python 3 interpreter to execute your script. To rule out this possibility, you might try the following:

ls -al /usr/bin/python*

This will list the python interpreters available on your system. If you have more than one interpreter you'll get something similar to this output:

/usr/bin/python -> python3*
/usr/bin/python2.6*  
/usr/bin/python3*  

If not, it would be this output:

/usr/bin/python -> python2.6*
/usr/bin/python2.6*  

To make sure, this is not the issue you're having, try with this modified sample script:

#!/usr/bin/python2.6

# enable debugging
import cgitb
cgitb.enable()

print "Content-Type: text/plain\r\n\r\n"
print

print "Hello World!"

You'll notice that I explicitly mentioned the version of the interpreter apache should invoke, which is ugly. But for the sake of testing, you can do it. Of course you should map #!/usr/bin/python2.6, to whatever binary you have on your server, and make sure you don't mix python 3 comtipable code with python 2 interpreter and vice versa.