Windows taint issue causes FastCGI to fail

FastCGIEngine was giving me difficulties installing on our production server.

I tracked down the problem to that fact that Windows is initially running foswiki.fcgi in taint mode. However, from what I can tell you expect it to run untainted initially then switch to taint mode when re-execing.

By swapping the logic around in foswiki.fcgi and FastCGI.pm I have been able to get running. (I start tainted and re-exec untainted).

I really need to track why strawberry perl on Windows starts in taint mode for foswiki.fcgi, then hopefully I can find the right file attributes to change and revert to the correct and default set-up.

Unless of course someone out there already knows?

Thanks

-- JulianLevens - 10 Jun 2010

I'm a little curious why running foswiki.fcgi in taint mode is a problem in the first place - I thought we'd squashed most of the taint trouble.

-- SvenDowideit - 12 Jun 2010

It's not a problem at all. I made it run without taint mode and then reexec with taint on so it could run in taint mode at dream host. At the time I coded it, it was the only way foswiki.fcgi worked at DH.

And fastcgi+windows is a combination that gave me so much headache that I gave up to debug/document/support it. Sorry.

-- GilmarSantosJr - 12 Jun 2010

It looks like I'll have to solve this then!

BTW As of perl 5.8 (Foswiki base level) you can now use the variable ${^TAINT} to detect if taint mode is on, somewhat less obscure than the current code.

Thanks for the info, it explains why the re-exec is required. I could not see a reason for it. I'll see if I can code a Windows patch.

-- JulianLevens - 14 Jun 2010

Thanks for the ${^TAINT} info.