It would appear that you have two non-perl-related choices: either change the Apache configuration so you can serve images from somewhere where the user that the CGI application runs as can write to, or change the permissions on the existing images directory so that you can create files there.

A third option would be to continue to write the files to the non server accessible directory as you currently are and instead of referencing the image directly in your <img /> element you use a small program to output directly with the appropriate header - something like:

#!/usr/bin/perl -T
#
 
use strict;
use warnings;
 
use File::Spec;
 
use CGI qw(:standard);
 
my $upload_path = '/tmp/upload';
 
my $filename = param('image');
 
if ( $filename =~ /([\w.]+\.jpg)$/ )
{
  $filename = File::Spec->catfile($upload_path, $1);
  my $image = do {
                   open IMAGE, $filename or die "Bad image $filename $
+!\n";
                   binmode IMAGE;
                   select IMAGE;
                   local $/;
                   <IMAGE>;
                 };
  binmode STDOUT;
  print STDOUT header('image/jpeg'),$image;
}
else
{
   print header('text/plain'),"Bad image name - try again";
}
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/J\

You can

1. use the Alias directive to have a location point to some path outside the DocumentRoot
2. allow the webserver process to write to some images directory inside the tree rooted at DocumentRoot
3. use a CGI script to serve the image. Provide e.g. the tag

   <img src="/cgi-bin/image.pl?img=$tag.jpg">
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   in the page referencing the image, and have it served thusly:

   #!/usr/bin/perl -T
   use CGI;
   use strict;
   my $q = new CGI;
   if($q->param('img') =~ /^([\w\.\-]+)$/) { # untaint
       my $file = $1;
       if(-f "/tmp/$file") {
           if(open(I,'<',"/tmp/$file")) {
               print $q->header(-content_type => "image/jpeg");
               print while <I>;
               close I;
               exit; 
           }   
       }   
   }   
   print $q->header(-status => '404 Not found');
   print "<h1>Not found.</h1>\n";
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--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

Dear Shmem,

I tried the third one.. and is giving output but not as image.. its all Greek and Latin..

Below are the lines of code, where I am generating the image..

  my  $png_data = $im->png;
  #open (DISPLAY,"| display -") || die;
   print $query->p("$tag : Free energy curve of forward strand and shu
+ffle sequence");
  #open (DISPLAY,">/var/www/html/upload/$tag.jpg") ||error ($query, "C
+ant open GRAPH:") ;
   open (DISPLAY,">/tmp/upload/$tag.jpg") ||error ($query, "Cant open 
+GRAPH:") ;
    binmode DISPLAY;
    print DISPLAY $png_data;
    close DISPLAY;
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and just to try with your piece of code, I am trying with this.

open (I, '<', "/tmp/upload/$tag.jpg");
#print $query->header(-content_type => "image/png");
print while <I>;
close I;
exit;
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What u say ?? pl help!!

   open (DISPLAY,">/tmp/upload/$tag.jpg") ||error ($query, "Cant open 
+GRAPH:") ;
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Why are you appending .jpg as extension, if the image is PNG?

    binmode DISPLAY;
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Try using binmode I; for reading and binmode STDOUT for writing the file.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

The issue is that there are two different namespaces. The one used within the server OS and the one that the browser sees.

In the past I have created a "Dynamic Images" directory (say ~/web_pages/tmp) which is mapped by Apache (say to to "//dyn_images/"). Then the file I create is ~/web_pages/tmp/2006Sep09_01.jpg and the <img> refers to "/dyn_images/2006Sep09_01.jpg"

The Alias directive in Apache is what you need.

Its indeed a good advise Monk.. will try using it and get back to you.. Thank you

To use this I tried installing

HTML-Template-Compiled-Plugin-InlineImage-0.02 It asked to install this HTML-Template-Compiled-0.73 and then to install this, it asked to install build module.. for which i tried this.. Acme-Hello-0.03

But this is showing error while installing.. :( and too in my system C compiler.. so its a long way to go.. but anyway thanks for your time and suggestion

...the problem is my CGI is not able to write the graph in /var/www/html/image location.

Could you show us the part of the code that is not able to do that? What are the error messages?

Here is the part of complete code that is of around 2000 lines.

 
 my  $png_data = $im->png;

   print $query->p("$tag : Free energy curve of forward strand and shu
+ffle sequence");
   open (DISPLAY,">/var/www/html/upload/$tag.jpg") ||error ($query, "C
+ant open GRAPH:") ;
    binmode DISPLAY;
    print DISPLAY $png_data;
    close DISPLAY;
}
  print "<p> ";
#       print "<img src=\"http://localhost/../../../tmp/upload/$tag.jp
+g\">";
     # print "<img src=\"http://127.0.0.1/upload/$tag.jpg\">";
       print "<img src=\"upload/$tag.jpg\">";
#       print "<img src=\"http://localhost/image.jpg\"> ";
        print "</p>";
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