[cgi-prototype-users] a fascinating little bug "Bad header=" bug from Apache

[Terrence B. <ba...@me...>]

I added a little more functionality to my guestbook to have it tar up
the whole site and send it. For some reason, I kept getting this error
in the Apache log

[Sat Sep 10 15:00:05 2005] [error] [client 24.130.176.67] malformed
header from script. Bad header=metaperl.org/:
/var/www/terry/metaperl.org/cgi-bin/Guestbook.cgi

and I googled and googled. At first I thought I need autoflush on but
that was not it. Then I looked at exactly when the error was occurring
and reazlied that it was right when I started to tar the file. 

What was happening was that tar was issuing output to STDOUT and
apache was trying to interpret it as an HTTP header!

So my fix would be to silence tar or redirect the system command
output elswhere or use Archive::Tar from CPAN.

What a great way to spend 1.5 hours on a Sunday morn...

-- 
	Carter's Compass: I know I'm on the right track when,
	   by deleting something, I'm adding functionality.