Re: [MacPerl] Testing a perl cgi offline

[Joel Rees <joel_rees@sannet.ne.jp>]

>At 5:15 pm +0100 7/1/00, John Neale wrote:
>>But I want to develop the script, and test it, off-line on my own Mac
>>PowerBook. Could someone suggest to me what my best options are?I've got
>>Personal Web Sharing installed, but it seems I have to be on-line to get an
>>IP address so that I can in turn look in my own hard disk web page folder
>>to access the script.

Yeah, it turns out that if you don't have an address, you can't serve a 
web. So if you are set up to get your IP address from a proxy or a 
provider's server, you have to go on line to get it. A server that has a 
fake-myself-out-for-test-and-development setting might be nice.

>
>
>I am working with MAcOS 7.6.1 at the moment because it's faster than 
>8.6 for most things.  So I am using NetPresenz as my server.
>
><ftp://ftp.stairways.com//stairways/netpresenz-41.sit.bin>

I've used NetPresenz locally, too. I think it has some nice documentation 
and a nice showcase, particularly showing how to use SSI and CGI. I don't 
think I would use it on live web, but for one machine local, it seemed to 
serve both Netscape 4 and IE 3 properly. 

I was also able to get Personal Web Sharing to serve my site locally to 
Netscape 4, but it had problems with IE 3, with CGIs and/or SSIs, I'm not 
sure which. 

NetPresenz did a nice job of overwriting the text source to a CGI I was 
trying to call, which is one reason I would not want to use it live. It 
doesn't seem to be a hole for Macs, but it would be a big hole on a UNIX 
box. (I forgot to make the CGI into an app.)

>
>Whatever local server you are using...
>
>Set up a TCP/IP config set with just the following
>
>Connect via:AppleTalk (MacIP)
>Configure:Using MacIP Manually
>IP Address:127.0.0.2
>
>I think you can use any IP address you want, for example it makes no 
>difference whether I write 127.0.0.2 or 158.152.20.126, which is my 
>fixed IP address allocated by Demon.  Others are probably far more 
>knowledgable than me on these questions, but I have things working 
>with this set-up and can FTP HTTP or Gopher to my own machine without 
>a connexion to the Internet.

Be careful not to actually get ON the web with a dummy IP address, or 
with someone else's.

The setup takes a little work, which is where the docs in NetPresenz 
helped me. You might need the Remote Only extension, to get Apple Talk to 
turn on with no one else hooked up. It's either part of Open Transport, 
or in the extras folder in your system disk (Apple Remote Access).

You'll need Apple Talk and File Sharing both turned on, then you will 
need to enable sharing (read-only!) for the folder that holds the 
development site. For safety's sake, you will probably want to switch off 
Apple Talk access on all other volumes. Remember, owner might be someone 
who was able to guess your password, and not you at all.

With all the above complete, set up your server and run it. NetPresenz, 
incidentally, adds its own layer of access privilege management, which 
can also be handy.

>You can switch to this congig set using the control strip or set up a 
>location to use it.  I hate the fuss of the location manager but I 
>suppose it has its uses once you've set it up.

If you are using Mac OS 8+, you can just save your TCP-IP settings with a 
name. Look under the file menu of the TCP-IP control panel for an item 
called "Settings ..." or something like that. (Mine is Japanese, so I 
can't say for sure what the English would be.)

>JD

Thanks, Mr. Delacour, for the clue on the dummy IP address, by the way. I 
had forgotten.

>
>
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