I've gotten spoiled with shell access, I guess. I'm now working on a site I can only access by ftp and browser. The browser returns an error of: 
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete yo
+ur request.

Error message:
Premature end of script headers: <scriptname>

[download]
I've commented out nearly everything, yet this is still what I get. There is already a script running here using DBI, from which I snagged the connection parameters. This passes the perl -wc check on my local sandbox, but when I upload it I get nothing but the browser error reported above. I'm running out of ideas for how to debug this. Any clues would be greatly appreciated.

-- Hugh

UPDATE
Well, that's embarrasing folks. I'm used to scp preserving permissions. Apparently ftp applies a mask to the incoming so folks are more deliberate about how they pass around privileges in the file system. A simple chmod was all it took. I guess it really was about me operating in a new environment. Now I need to go monitor what's happening on my test dataset. Thanks for the feedback.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use DBI;
# use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
# use lib qw{/public_html/lib};
# use Date::Manip;

my $preserve_date = '2006-10-30';
my %registrations;
# my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:mysql:dbname','userID','secret',{RaiseEr
+ror=>1}) or die "no \$dbh: $DBI::errstr";
#

###  ALL THE MAIN() LOGIC HAS BEEN COMMENTED OUT!

print <<EOF;
<html>
<head>
<title>Masking Private Data</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Masking Private Data</h2>
This script is masking private data in the test data set with a depart
+ure date before $preserve_date.  Records related to later events are 
+being preserved.<p>
</body>
</html>
EOF

1;

sub parse_date {
  my ($date_str) = @_;
  my $date = ParseDate($date_str);
  $date = substr($date,0,4) . '-' . substr($date,4,2) . '-' . substr($
+date,6,2);
  return $date;
}

[download]
if( $lal && $lol ) { $life++; }

In reply to Debugging without shell access? by hesco

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