Forum Discussion

paul_adomeit_70's avatar
paul_adomeit_70
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Sep 14, 2006

Create RSS Feed via iControl (DevCentral sample)

I've tried to get the sample RSS feed generator from DevCentral to work and I'm stuck. The server is Windows 2003. Perl is from ActiveState v5.8.8.819. I added "Crypt-SSLeay v0.51). When I run the NetworkStatus.cgi script from the command line, it connects to my big-ip and spits out 'good' stuff (and writes to the cache directory). When I call the script from a browser or RSS reader, it says the XML can't be displayed with the rss and channel tags not being closed.

 

 

I also get the error "[Thu Sep 14 15:56:58 2006] [error] [client 157.209.192.201] 500 Can't locate object method "new" via package "LWP::Protocol::https::Socket" at C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/cgi-bin/NetworkStatus.cgi line 337".

 

 

I can run the /cgi-bin/printenv.pl script that comes with Apache 2.2.

 

I switched over to IIS just to see what would happen and I get the same error about not being able to locate the object method "NEW" via package LWP::......etc.

 

 

I'm pretty sure I have all the normal stuff covered like making sure the server can execute CGI/Perl, the the shebang line !/perl/bin/perl.exe line is set the right way, permissions etc are OK.

 

 

Has anyone gotten this to work?

 

-p
dev
devops
iControl

5 Replies

Sort By
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Sep 14, 2006
    I'll have to look into building a native ASP.Net version of this sample for windows users out there. I'm not too sure about configuring apache under windows and how it handles permissions and user environments. If it works from the command line but not from within the browser, then this smells of an user/environment issue with the user context of the cgi.

     

     

    Have you tried escalating the user privileges for your web apps user context?

     

     

    All of this is assuming you have the LWP module installed correctly (which I assume you do as you can run it from the command line).

     

     

    -Joe
  • paul_adomeit_70's avatar
    paul_adomeit_70
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Sep 15, 2006
    For a quick test on Apache, I started the service with an administrator account and that made it work. Now to go back and figure out which permisions are really needed. I've stopped working on the IIS box due to lack of time but I bet it should be pretty simple to get it to work there as well.

     

    Cheers.

     

    -p
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Sep 15, 2006
    I figured it was a permission issue. That sample was whipped up pretty quick after Robert Scoble came over here to F5 and asked if iControl could be used with RSS. Any suggestions or improvements would be greatly appreciated.

     

     

    -Joe
  • Amy_Allen_97294's avatar
    Amy_Allen_97294
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Oct 27, 2006
    I hard code username and password to cgi script, but I still have to put in username and password to view status. Is there a way to advoid putting username and password. I am trying to post status online for users (non F5 admin) to see.

     

     

    Thanks,

     

    Amy
  • Joe_Pruitt's avatar
    Joe_Pruitt
    Oct 30, 2006
    I'm not sure why that wouldn't work. As long as you set the BIGIP, USER and PASS variables at the top to the correct values AND you do not pass in values for the host, port, user, and pass GET parameters, then I don't see how it should require you to pass in the values as the credentials are taken directly from the $USER and $HOST variables.

     

     

    I would debug print out these values right before the credential validation code

     

     

    --------------------------------------------------------------------
 Transport information
--------------------------------------------------------------------
sub SOAP::Transport::HTTP::Client::get_basic_credentials
{
return "$USER" => "$PASS";
}

     

     

    and make sure that they are set properly.

     

     

    -Joe