Configuring lighttpd to handle CGI C executables

Question

Does anyone know how to configure lighttpd to handle plain CGI executables, in this case written in C? I have compiled a test program (test.cgi) and put it in $HOME/public_html/cgi-bin. I have also enabled the CGI module with lighty-enable-mod cgi and restarted the web server. Still, when requesting http://localhost/~august/cgi-bin/test.cgi the program is not run but is instead treated as a static file. Here is my test program by the way:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
   printf("Content-type: text/plain\n\n");
   puts("test...");
   return 0;
}

Answer 1

The default CGI configuration looks like this:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/cgi-bin/" {
    cgi.assign = ( "" => "" )
}

i.e. only binaries in the cgi-bin directory under the document root will be executed. To enable per-user cgi directories, add

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^(/~[^/]+)?/cgi-bin/" {
    cgi.assign = ("" => "")
}

to the lighttpd configuration file.