Perl is a popular programming language that can be used to create web applications. It is easy to install Perl on IIS 6 for Windows Server 2003, and you can use the following steps to do so:
- Open the IIS Manager and click on the Web Applications node.
- In the left pane, click on the Add New Item button.
- Type perl into the text field and click on Add.
- In the Add New Item dialog, enter perl6 into the Name field and click on OK.
- The Perl installation process will start automatically and will take a few minutes to complete. Once it has finished, you will see a message indicating that Perl has been installed successfully.
Copying the Perl Binaries
Before any IIS setup can be done, the Perl binary files must be extracted to your system. Download the ActiveState Perl distribution package (get the AS zip file and not the installer) and extract them to a folder on your server (i.e. ‘C:perl’). We will map IIS to use the files located in this directory.
Configuring IIS 6 to Run Perl Scripts
Open Internet Information Services Manager to the Web Service Extensions and select the option to add a new extension.
Set the following properties:
Extension name: Perl CGI Required files: C:perlbinperl. exe “%s” %s (assuming you extracted the files to ‘C:perl’) Status set to allowed
Once finished, apply your changes.
You should see the new extension in the Web Service Extension list with the status set to allowed.
With the service extension installed, we have to create the Perl script file type mappings.
Right click on the Web Sites folder and go to the Properties dialog.
On the Home Directory tab, open the Configuration dialog.
To allow IIS to execute Perl script files (.pl), add an extension mapping with the following properties:
Executable: same as the “Required files” entered when creating the “Perl CGI” extension above Extension: . pl Verbs: GET,HEAD,POST Check the box for script engine
Once finished apply your changes.
Additionally, if Perl scripts will be deployed as CGI files (.cgi), an extension mapping will need to be configured for this file type as well:
Executable: same as the “Required files” entered when creating the “Perl CGI” extension above Extension: . cgi Verbs: GET,HEAD,POST Check the box for script engine
Once finished apply your changes.
After making the required configuration changes to IIS, run the “iisreset” command from the command prompt to ensure the changes are pushed through and active.
At this point, IIS 6 should be able to successfully serve Perl scripts.
Testing Perl
At this point, your server is ready to go, but just to be sure we can confirm your Perl setup through IIS pretty easily. Create a couple of text files in the directory ‘C:Inetpubwwwroot’ named ‘test.pl’ and ‘test.cgi’ both containing the following:
Finally, browse to the addresses: ‘http://localhost/test.pl’ and ‘http://localhost/test.cgi’ on your server and you should see a message stating that Perl is working. If the page loads successfully, Perl is now up and running on your machine.
use strict; use CGI; my $test = new CGI;
print $test->header(“text/html”),$test->start_html(“Perl Test”); print $test->h1(“Perl is working!”); print $test->end_html;
Conclusion
Once you have Perl up and running on your Windows system, you can deploy or develop your own Perl CGI applications.
Links
Download ActivePerl from ActiveState (AS Zip Package)
