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Hiawatha version: 8.01
Operating System: Ubuntu

Hi
I have a website that was working just fine in Apache, which I have now migrated to Hiawatha. I am quite happy with the migration excepting for one CGI Script which is consistently timing out irrespective of setting a high time for 'TimeForCGI' in that particular virtual host

These are the details:
a) This CGI script is written in Rebol language and it works perfectly fine in Apache. The CGI script is invoked by the usual !# command at the beginning of the script. Other scripts are working fine
b) This CGI script first creates an HTML which does get displayed in the browser. Then a javascript function in that displayed HTML file in the browser invokes the same CGI script again via Ajax (with different QUERY_STRING parameters). For this I use JQuery.ajaxSubmit() That does the final step of adding some more detail into the displayed HTML

I am preplexed why is that this particular CGI script was working just fine in Apache, and here it is giving so much problem. I tried several TimeForCGI and now the setting is 125 seconds (It really does not need all that much) I also know that Rebol does not have a Timeout value or stops the execution of the script. If I manually call the script with the QUERY_STRING parameters used by the Ajax, it works just fine. It is just in the Ajax call, (i.e. the call made internally by the browser) that it timesout and I saw that entry in the error.log file

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for a good product
Regards
Sabu Francis

Ok. I got the previous script to work.

Firstly a correction: The AjaxSubmit() was doing a 'POST' invocation of a form in the previously created HTML.

I changed that 'POST' to a 'GET' and now it is working

In short, I seriously think Hiawatha is having some problem with timeout when we use Ajax POST. The GET method seems to be working. Maybe you should look into that

Thanks again

I can assure that Hiawatha works fine. A POST request via AJAX is no different from a 'normal' POST request. The only extra in a AJAX POST requests is the "X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest" HTTP header line.

Most of the time, timeouts occur when a CGI script prints an incorrect Content-Length line. If a script writes "Content-Length: 10", but only writes 5 bytes of HTTP content, the browser waits for the final 5 byte. If they are never written, you'll get a timeout error.

What I advice you to do is to install Fiddler2 [fiddler2.com] to see what goes wrong.

Hi
Thanks for responding fast. Is 'Content-Length' mandatory? I did not send any 'Content-length:' string in my header of my CGI Post when I was posting it via my Apache server. There it worked fine. I had just sent 'Content-type: text/html\n\n"

Maybe Hiawatha is stringent about 'Content-Length' ? What happens if it is not sent at all? Will it still be waiting?

Thanks

Regards
Sabu Francis

The Content-Length is an optional header. But if a CGI script does print it, it should be correct.

If it is not printed, Hiawatha will continue to read until the end of the stream.

In my previous post, I made a mistake. It's of course not Hiawatha waiting for the final 5 bytes, it's the browser who's waiting for the last bytes.