Web File Search CGI Program for Linux

So you can install Fedora, and choose the Web Server package. If you are running any kind of file server, you will probably want to find a file over the web. This script allows users to search the mlocate database which is usually compiled by your Linux installation every night. It's a fast database which circumvents searching the filesystem manually. I had to write it, so I extend my source code to everyone in hopes that it will help someone.

It has some thought put into security. The results are displayed as links to facilitate viewing/downloading the located file. It should be used to search one part of the file system. In my case, the public area is /srv/. This part of the filesystem should be linked into the Apache document root via

ln -s /srv /var/www/html/srv

to allow the users access to the files with your HTTP server.

Following is the Perl-CGI code. Name it locate.cgi and it should go in your cgi-bin directory. Don't forget to chmod 755 the file so it's executable. Because of technical limitations of Blogger, I can't paste the Perl-CGI code here--please follow the following link:

http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~rhelins1/getfile.php?id=26