700 would only be right if the the directories and files are all owned by the user that the webserver processes run as (not the root process, but the others that are spawned to actually service requests.

Example: if I issue:
ps auxwww | egrep httpd
I get:

root      2730  0.0  0.4 19776 2496 ?        S    Jul31   0:01 /usr/sb
+in/httpd
apache    2763  0.0  0.5 19840 2692 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2764  0.0  0.5 19848 2700 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2765  0.0  0.5 19840 2696 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2766  0.0  0.5 19916 2816 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2767  0.0  0.5 19924 2840 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2768  0.0  0.5 19800 2564 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2769  0.0  0.4 19800 2468 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
apache    2770  0.0  0.4 19800 2468 ?        S    Jul31   0:00 [httpd]
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so you should check that the apache user (or whatever user is involved in your case) has access to the files, by issuing: su - apache (if you do this from other than root, you'll be promted to enter the password for the apache account), the attempt to run/compile the modules with perl -cw /home/homedir/www/module.pm (or is it perl -cw /home/homedir/www/perl/module.pm?)

You do have something like

LoadFile "C:/Perl/bin/perl56.dll"
LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so
AddModule mod_perl.c
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In my conf-file I see that I have <Location /perl> without the trailing slash.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so

<Directory "d:/apache/web/">

    # bla bla bla

    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes ExecCGI

    # bla bla bla

</Directory>

<Files ~ "\.pl$">
    SetHandler perl-script
     PerlHandler Apache::Registry
     Options ExecCGI
    PerlSendHeader On
</Files>
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I've got the permissions right now with a little help from bob-n, but apache doesn't seem to be using mod_perl to interpret the script. As stated above httpd.conf has the following lines (right at the bottom, if it matters):

Alias /perl/ /home/homedir/www/

PerlModule Apache::Registry
<Location /perl/>
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlHandler Apache::Registry
    Options +ExecCGI
    PerlSendHeader On
    Allow from all
</Location>
[download]

I took that example directly from practical mod_perl so I assume it should work. What happens is the sever just prints out the text of the script.

Let me tell you by experience that what you want to do, is just undoing all the security done to your preconfigured server. It is difficult to do this because of the precautions thought by the expert webmasters.

You should read more about all. Webmin is a good tool to manage the global vision about your server. You are able to see the whole context and then make specifical changes.

Webmin should be installed and running at port 10000. Try running http://localhost:10000 to see if it is working.

And then, read as much as you can about it, in it's help file.

To download it for *NIX systems, see the https://sourceforge.net/projects/webadmin/ page. This masterpiece is done completely in Perl.

USE THE ERROR LOG LUKE

Here's the relevant error:

Permission denied: access to /www/page.pl failed because
search permissions are missing on a component of the path
[download]

Any ideas?

This means that either the file you're trying to run or one part of the path lacks permssions needed by the webserver process to get your file. For example, for path /home/homedir/www/module.pm, all of /home/, /home/homedir/, home/homedir/www/, and /home/homedir/www/module.pm must have read and execute permissions for the user underwhich the httpd process runs.

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com