[Discuss] Weird Apache backticks problem

[Peter Scott]

Hi, I thought I'd try here first on this.  I'm installing TWiki on a 
server that I don't control, and I have boiled a bizarre problem down 
to this: a (perl) program that executes a command in backticks will 
work in the cgi-bin directory, but hang elsewhere.  The program is no 
longer than

	print `/bin/ls`;

(after the content-type header) and it makes no difference what the 
command in the `` is.  If I put anything else besides backticks in the 
program it executes properly.  I have a .htaccess in the directory with 
a SetHandler cgi-script directive.  The cgi-bin directory has no 
.htaccess file.  The other directory is not a child of the cgi-bin but 
is a couple of levels under htdocs, a sibling of cgi-bin.

I got nowhere Googling this.  There were some postings alleging a 
similar problem on Windows servers but this is Linux (something called 
vux by the look of it).  As a last resort I will have to figure out how 
to install TWiki by moving its programs to a cgi-bin directory out of 
its main tree, but I'd still like to know what the heck is going on here.
-- 
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies
http://www.perldebugged.com/
http://www.perlmedic.com/