redirect(8)redirect(8)NAMEredirect - simple redirection CGI program
SYNOPSISredirectDESCRIPTION
Three steps to set up a redirection:
1. Make sure your web server is set up to allow CGI pro
grams.
2. Make a symbolic link from the file or directory you
want to redirect, pointing at this program in the CGI bin
directory.
3. Add an entry to the file ".redirects" in the directory
where your http server runs CGI programs. For most
servers, this is the directory where the given CGI program
lives. The format of the file is a bunch of lines with a
filename, whitespace, and the new URL. For example:
/test/oldfile.html http://www.acme.com/test/newfile.html
The easiest way to figure out precisely what filename to
put into .redirects is to set up the symlink and then
click on it. You'll get back a "404 Not Found" page which
includes the filename as received by the redirect program,
and that's what you want to use.
You can also add a wildcard specification to redirect
whole groups of files. For example:
/wildtest/* http://www.acme.com/test-
will cause an access to the /wildtest/somefile.html to be
redirected to http://www.acme.com/test-somefile.html.
(Note that the asterisk need not be preceded by a slash.)
Note: this is designed for thttpd
(http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/) and using it with
other web servers may require some hacking. A possible
gotcha is with the symbolic link from the old file point
ing at this script - servers other than thttpd may not
allow that link to be run as a CGI program, because they
don't check the link to see that it points into the
allowed CGI directory.
SEE ALSOthttpd(8)BUGS / DEFICIENCIES
It would be really cool to have this program look for the
.redirects file in the same directory as the file being
redirected, instead of in the binaries directory. Unfor
tunately, this appears to be impossible with the informa
tion CGI gives, plus the non-standardized but widespread
practice of running CGI programs in the directory where
the binary lives. Perhaps CGI 1.2 will address this.
The wildcard mechanism is very primitive. In particular,
any characters that follow the asterisk are blithely
ignored.
AUTHOR
Copyright 1995 by Jef Poskanzer <jef@acme.com>. All
rights reserved.
23 September 1995 redirect(8)