Hi there,

I have some more info to my problem above.

I tried php3 instead of php4 in a similar environment as above and I got another reaction: I got an error message 'No input file specified'. I tried thousand things to get rid of this until I did the following: I defined in a DOS Console exactly the same environment variables as those passed to PHP3 when called from my WEB Server (Apache). Et voila: I got 'No input file specified' By reducing all variables I finally found the bad guy: SERVER_NAME. If this one is set, PHP3 does not work anymore. So everybody is welcome to try these steps:

1: Download php3 to any directory

2: cd to this directory and issue php -v. You will get:
   3.0.16

3: set variable SERVER_NAME to any value (I used 'lisa', who is my daughter) and issue 'php -v' again and you will see:
 > set SERVER_NAME=lisa

 > php -v
   X-Powered-By: PHP/3.0.16
   Content-type: text/html

   <br>
   <b>Fatal error</b>:  Unable to open -v in <b>-</b> on    line <b>0</b><br>
   No input file specified.

So we have reproduced the CGI binary behaviour in a DOS Console.

Unfortunately it does not help to unset SERVER_NAME in a Batch CGI script before calling PHP3 - same effect (i.e. 'No input file specified'). Further systematic work along the lines outlined above found finally the bad guy: It is the variable SCRIPT_FILENAME, unsetting this finally made PHP3 as CGI binary work on NT.

Summarizing everything, I have now PHP3 as CGI binary on NT with apache working as follows:

1: Define in an HTML-Form as CGI-ACTION an NT batchfile, say od.bat.

2: od.bat containes these lines
  @echo off
  set SCRIPT_FILENAME=
  c:\primos\php3\php.exe odbc_books.php3


3: PHP3 comes up nicely and processes odbc_books.php3

4: If  you omit the line 'set SCRIPT_FILENAME=' you will see the familar 'No input file specified'.


Going back to PHP4 with this technique, I was only partially 'successful': Setting up the environment variables in a DOS Console as above will ALSO crash PHP4
(OleMainThreadWndName: .. 0x1007d14e ..), but I did not succeed in unsetting the environment variables in the CGI batch file as above - PHP4 is still crashing.


Feedback wellcome,

Werner

Hi there, me again, some more comments on my problem

I have now something like the ultimate solution/workaround to the 'No input file specified' problem!

I have done my homework and studied a little bit of PHP3 source code. I found that the environment variables PATH_INFO and PATH_TRANSLATED play an important role when it comes to the above error situation. In addition, I read a little CGI docu and found that Apache does not use these variables. 

I decided to define these two variables before starting php and it worked out perfectly - on all plattforms and with PHP3 and PHP4. So the wellknown PHP4 bug 'OleMainThreadWndName: .. 0x1007d14e' also dissapeared and PHP4 on NT runs perfectly.

I summarize my workaround:

1: Define in an HTML-Form as CGI-ACTION an NT batchfile, say od.bat.

2: od.bat containes these lines:
  @echo off  
  set PATH_INFO=c:\apache\cgi-bin (i.e. your cgi-bin path)
  set PATH_TRANSLATE=od.php3      (i.e. your cgi-bin script)
  c:\primos\php3\php.exe          (i.e. NO input file)

3: PHP3 comes up nicely and processes od.php3

If  you omit the lines 'set PATH_..=' you will see the familar 'No input file specified' from PHP3 and the accessvio from PHP4. On UNIX you write a script and use setenv/export for 'set ..'.

That was it, Werner

Does this problem exist with php4.0.2 ?

--Jani

No feedback.

--Jani