Homework #1 involves the installation and configuration of a web server on your laptop. You will need a properly configured server for subsequent labs and tests - so this assignment is important! Your server must be configured so that it can handle the following:

• Can serve up static HTML files
• Can handle Perl CGI programs
• Can handle VBScript Active Server Pages

Homework #1 can be done with anyone! Get all the help you can (from anyone at all!).

Information about software installation, configuration and testing is included below. There are also some documents that you must install on your web server, these documents will be used to make sure you have all the software we will need set up properly.

Picking a web server

Although there are many different web servers to pick from, we need a server capable of handling Active Server Pages (VBScript) - this (pretty much) restricts the choices to Microsoft products. It is possible to handle ASP with the Apache web server (there is an ASP module available), if you are familiar with Apache feel free to use it for this class, but we will not provide any help configuring or installing it.

There are two web servers you might consider installing: Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). Any version of either of these products will handle everything we need for EIW, so if you already have one of these installed you can skip ahead to the Perl/CGI section of this document. If you don't currently have a web server installed, you should use the following guide to decide which server to install:

Operating System	Web Server
Windows 95	You are kidding, right? Try upgrading! (Actually PWS will work fine)
Windows 98	Unless you already have IIS, go with PWS (it's free!)
Windows NT workstation	You probably don't have IIS, PWS is free
Windows NT Server	You already have IIS
Windows 2000	You already have IIS, or can install it from your CD
Windows XP Home	We don't know if IIS comes with XP Home. Please see Dave with your laptop (and CD) so we can figure this out!
Windows XP Pro	You already have IIS (or can install if from your CD)
Linux	Apache. You will need an add-on to handle VBScript, you can get a trial version of Sun One ASP (chilisoft)
BSD,OS X, anything else...	We don't know (you are on your own...)

How do I find out if I already have a Web Server installed?

You can test your laptop by opening a brower on your laptop and typing in the URL: http://127.0.0.1/ or http://localhost/. If you get a web page back, you have a web server installed.

NOTE: The IP address 127.0.0.1 is called the "loopback" address. No matter what machine you are on, this address corresponds to the machine itself. Under some versions of Windows, the loopback address doesn't seem to work unless you are actually connected to the Internet (this is a bug)!. To be safe, make sure your laptop is connected when you do this test.

Microsoft Personal Web Server Installation

If you decide you need to use PWS, you can get the software over the internet from Microsoft at: http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/ntoptionpack/askwiz.asp. Note that PWS is part of the NT 4.0 Option Pack, don't let this scare you - you don't need NT to run PWS. There are installation instructions at the above web site - follow the instructions for installing PWS only - you don't need the rest of the NT 4.0 Option Pack

You can also ask Dave or any TA for a CD that contains PWS. It is much easier from this CD than from the Microsft web site...

The Microsoft documentation on how to set up PWS is available at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/officedev/office97/settinguppersonalwebserver.htm. Follow the instructions to test out the basic stuff.

IIS Installation

If your operating system comes with IIS, you can find out if it is already installed by attempting to load the page http://127.0.0.1/ (this will be the home page of your web server). If it is installed this page will include links to basic setup information.

If you don't have IIS installed, you can install it from the Windows CD that came with your computer. Go to the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel (or Add Services) and look for IIS, or "Internet Information Server". Installation should be simple from here...

Testing ASP

Once you have a server installed, you should be able to get the server home page via URL 127.0.0.1. This page is actually an ASP script, so you have verified that ASP is working!

CGI and Perl

You will need to install Perl (if you don't already have it installed) and configure your web server to handle Perl CGI programs.

There are a few different versions of Perl available, the version that we suggest is ActiveState Perl, which is available on the WWW at: http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/. Click on the "Download" link and select the Windows version. There are two distributions available, the MSI (Microsoft Installer) version is the easiest way to go and allows you to uninstall Perl later if you want (avoid the AS package unless you have trouble...).

The default installation directory for Perl is in the folder C:\Perl - the instructions here assume this is where you actually install Perl.

Active state has a web page with information on how to configure your Web server to handle Perl/CGI (both PWS and ISS instructions). This information is available at: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Reference/Products/ActivePerl/faq/Windows/ActivePerl-Winfaq6.html.

Getting a grade for HW1

We expect everyone to get a 100 on HW1! It doesn't matter if you end up needing help getting your server working, the end result is all that matters. The whole idea of this assignment is to make sure you have a working server before we begin looking at ASP and Perl.

You get a grade for HW1 by demonstrating that your server is working to any TA or Dave, any time before the due date. There is nothing to turn in or write up.

To make it easy for us to determine that your server is set up and that you are capable of using the server to server up static files (HTML), ASP and Perl - we are providing a few documents that you should install on your web server and make sure they work. These documents are shown below - you can cut the text below, and create files using your favorite text editor. Note that you need to make sure the ASP page and the Perl program actually run!

Dave will demonstrate (during lecture) the process of getting and testing these files.

Test Files

• HTML file

  Copy this HTML to a file named "file.html" and install on your web server (copy to a folder that is served by your web server). You must be able to load this file from your browser using a URL that looks something like http://127.0.0.1/eiw/file.html, not just using a file:// URL.

  <html> <head> <title>Sample File</title> </head> <body> <h2>EIW Homework #1: This page seems to work!</h2> </body> </html>

• ASP file

  Copy this ASP script to a file named "file.asp" and install on your web server (copy to a folder that is served by your web server). You must be able to load this file from your browser using a URL that looks something like http://127.0.0.1/eiw/file.asp, not just using a file:// URL.

  <% LANGUAGE = VBScript %> <html> <head> <title>Sample ASP File</title> </head> <body> <h2>EIW Homework #1: The time is <% =Time() %> </h2> </body> </html>

  If things are working, when you load the page it will contain the current time.

• Perl file

  Copy this Perl script to a file named "file.pl" and install on your web server (copy to a folder that is served by your web server). You must be able to load this file from your browser using a URL that looks something like http://127.0.0.1/eiw/file.pl, not just using a file:// URL.

  #! perl # Simple Perl CGI program print "Content-type: text/html\r\n\r\n"; print "<html> <head> <title>Sample File</title> </head> <body>\n"; $tm = localtime; printf("<h2>EIW Homework #1: The perl time is %s</h2>\n",$tm); print "</body> </html>\n";

  If things are working, when you load the page it will contain the current time.