00718: BASIC Web Utility returns an incomplete set of HTTP headers

Title:

BASIC Web Utility returns an incomplete set of HTTP headers

Description:

When using the Basis Web Utility, it’s possible to recieve and error like the following: 

CGI Error:The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers. The headers it did return are…

Resolution:

The error indicates that the browser never got anything back from the stdcgi.exe program. On NT, VPRO/5 runs in the ‘background’ meaning that it’s invoked but you can’t see it. One test is to pull up the NT task manager before running anything. Then, execute the cgi program and wait for the error. After the error, if you see the VPRO/5 still in the task manager, then it’s still running. This is a common error, and can be a bit challenging to deal with. What’s happening is that the VPRO/5 session is running into an error and ends up going to console mode. Since you can’t see it, you can’t interact with it. Since you can’t interact with it, you can’t find out what the problem was or make it go away. 

The best way to deal with this is to put a seterr as the first line of your bbx program. Have it eventually release VPRO/5 so that it won’t get stuck like that. If you’re not sure that it can send info back to the browser, have it create a file and write state information in there. If it can write 
to the browser, have it return the error information that way. As an example: 

REM START OF PROGRAM 
SETERR ERR_ROUTINE 

REM PROGRAM BODY 

ERR_ROUTINE: 
HTML$= “Error:”+str(err)+” TCB:”+str(tcb(10)) + ” Line:”+str(tcb(5)) 
call “utsend.wbb”,HTML$ 
call “utexit.wbb”,CGI$ 


Here are some common reasons why the VPRO/5 session might run into an error: 

1) The prefix doesn’t include the path to the BWU utilities. Therefore, any calls to the utilities will result in a error 12, missing file. 

2) A problem with the way that it’s configured in the STDCGI.BAT configuration file. If you specify a program to run that doesn’t exist, or isn’t available via the PREFIX, VPRO/5 will issue an error 12. It could also have a problem if the path for the VPRO/5 executable or the config.bbx file is incorrect. 

3) The drive that the BWU utilities or the BBx program are on is dsksyn’d. 

4) Any programmatic errors that would normally occur during the execution of the BBx program. These include error 0’s if a file is busy, syntax errors, etc. Using a general error routine should help with this.

Last Modified: 03/31/2004 Product: BASIC Web Utility Operating System: Windows NT

BASIS structures five components of their technology into the BBx Generations.