Re: Octave Web GUI

[John Verzani]

Hello,

I've written a PERL/CGI/OCTAVE interface and can gladly share the code
with anyone interested including posting it if anyone desires. The
main concern should be security as OCTAVE allows _lots_ of access to
the underlying system. To work around this, my scripts filter out bad
commands, and then I take the further step of running it inside a
chroot 'sbox' environment. I'm glad to provide details of this as well.

The biggest problems I have is that it is **slow**!. THere is no
persistent connection to Octave and so each invocation starts up a new 
one. If this is something that one could help me with I'd be very
appreciative.

John Verzani


address@hidden writes:
 > 
 > Hello:
 > 
 > The directory in which the perl-octave-cgi script stores the output files
 > must be world-writable, I think. The "permission denied" may mean that the
 > directory is not world-writable as the process is normally run as user
 > "nobody". This is more likely the case.
 > 
 > If any of the perl-octave/cgi script does not have execute permission,
 > then the form may not display at all and the user will get error message
 > (in case of perl) or the output will not at all show up (in case octave
 > script is not executable).
 > 
 > Apart from all these things, you have to take care of the security aspects
 > of allowing an execution of any submitted m-file.
 > 
 > Vivek...
 > 
 > On Sat, 24 Jun 2000, Tom Weichmann wrote:
 > 
 > > Hello,
 > > 
 > > I am developing a cgi web based GUI to Octave using PERL.  Things are going
 > > great so far, and I plan on making the source public...of course.  It works
 > > like this.  There is a dialog box, where you input your m-file, then click 
 > > on
 > > the button to submit.  The cgi PERL script opens and writes the m-file
 > > to octave.  I then re-direct stdout to a file, and save any gnuplot output 
 > > to
 > > a file as well.  Then the PERL generates a the html for a web page which
 > > includes the text and graphical output from octave, and sends this to the
 > > browser.  I have accomplishes all of this, but no matter what I am doing in
 > > my m-file, I get an error at the very end of the text output.  The 
 > > following
 > > is an example of a *very* simple m-file, and its output to the web.
 > > 
 > > input----------------
 > > a=[1:1:10]
 > > b=[10:-1:1]
 > > 
 > > output--------------
 > > 
 > > a =
 > > 
 > >    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10
 > > 
 > > b =
 > > 
 > >   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
 > > 
 > > error: Permission denied
 > 
 > 
 > 
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 > 
 > Octave's home on the web:  http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/octave.html
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-- 
....................................................................
.  John Verzani                  mailto:address@hidden  .
.  Dept. of Mathematics      http://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/~verzani .
.  City University of New York                 tel: (718) 982-3623 .
.  College of Staten Island                    fax: (718) 982-3631 .
.  Staten Island, NY 10314                                         .
....................................................................



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