Installation difficulties with forward to e mail address

Installation - Email Signup / bounce.cgi - 3 Setup Email Aliases - CPanel
(forward)
|/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/bounce.cgi
|/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/signup-list1.cgi
Replace username with your site username.


Please help

In the above installation directions I cannot get it to work, and get an
error message saying the forward to e mail address is invalid.
I have tried with and without the vertical line to start the sentence and
tried to use various interpretations of your directions, such as

What goes in username, and what in public_HTML?

Scott van Niekerk
www.mfrsuccess.com

[DW]

Hi Scott,

It should look like this:

Email address:

Code: [Select]

bounce@example.com
Forward to (with the pipe character to start):

Code: [Select]

|/home/example/public_html/cgi-bin/bounce.cgi
After that one must configure and upload bounce.cgi and update the permissions to be executable.

If that doesn't result in success using "Test Mail Settings" bounce.cgi may need to be configured to use an alternative to wget.

Regards

Thank you for clearing up what the code is supposed to read. When I follow your instructions to the T, meaning I include the vertical line at the beginning, and write my domain name mfrsuccess in where username is, I STILL get the error message invalid e mail address.

The domain tech support states that it is not working because this is a URL, not an e mail address.

I read the WGET topic and do not understand how this can help me.

Please advise

[DW]

This is known as a "pipe" to a file on the server.  I do not believe it should be referred to as a URL.  On most cPanel systems an email forwarder should be able to be set up for bounce@example.com to |/home/youruser/public_html/cgi-bin/bounce.cgi.  Are you sure your host runs cPanel server management software and have not simply named their own control panel "cpanel"?

cPanel servers host your public web files in that folder, /home/username/public_html.  If you do not see a folder named "public_html" when you connect to your web host using FTP then you are likely not on a cPanel server and you will have to ask your host if email to CGI script redirection is possible on their servers.

Regards

[DW]

I read the WGET topic and do not understand how this can help me.

The bounce.cgi (Perl) script takes the message and actually passes it through another program to a PHP script through the web server, using the system utility wget, by default.  This was done due to prevent the need for a separate MySQL database config file for .cgi files and because many servers do not allow forwarding to PHP scripts.

Some servers do not have the default "wget" utility available, so an alternative must be configured manually in bounce.cgi.

Code: [Select]

# Program and paramaters to pass URL to
# Usually works as default (may be /usr/local/bin/wget or other)
$http_program = "/usr/bin/wget -O /dev/null " . $listmail_url . "/bounce.php";
This could be changed to use the "curl" alternative, for example:

Code: [Select]

$http_program = "/usr/bin/curl -o /dev/null " . $listmail_url . "/bounce.php";
You may need to try other alternatives or speak with your host about making one of these programs available to you.

Regards

I do not see a folder Public_HTML in FTP. Tech support states that they do not run cPanel server software.

However curl and wget is available. They showed me how to access these with the path through SSH software.

How to proceed?

[DW]

Email to CGI redirection is different on every host.  Basically we need an email alias/forwarder for bounce@example.com pointing to the bounce.cgi file, which can usually be placed somewhere in your home/web folders.  Your host will know the exact method to set up the alias and the proper paths to the bounce.cgi script, providing you have configured and uploaded it and given them a general idea of where it is located.

If wget is available an alternative configuration should not be required.  Simply configure bounce.cgi to contain your ListMail URL, upload it and CHMOD (set permissions) to 755 for it to be executable, then ask your host to set up the email alias/forwarder.

I cannot assist with the alias/forwarder because I do not have administrator access to the server nor knowledge about your host's system.  It sounds like the feature is not supported by the control panel and therefore a manual entry would need to be created by the administrator (your web host) tailored to their setup and mail software.

Regards