I wrote a CGI program years ago that gathers input from a user, querys a DB, plots the results in gnuplot using a system call and displays the results to the browser.

Life was good, the program worked, I got paid, there was much rejoicing.

Now the proplem... New SA, new web server (IIS6), new configuration.
Now the program don't work, and the old boss is calling me.

I can track the problem down to the system call to gnuplot. I don't have access to the server however, so as far as I can tell gnuplot can't create the .gif file (the gif is created by File::Temp). System returns, and my program displays an empty .gif image. I believe there is no way to get an error message from gnuplot in batch mode. I don't do windows, but it seems that there is a file permision issue. So my questions are simply
  1. What can I tell this *system administator* to help him find the problem
  2. Can I do something to work around his configuration issues
  3. Would there be any use in looking into something like Win32::Process
  4. Is there any way to make windows just go away?
Sorry if this post is somewhat off topic (and ill tempered).

In reply to system() and file permisions by Anonymous Monk

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