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Pastepile is a fork of guestbook.cgi – a simple guestbook script, written by John Callender in 1999. It is the last part of his Beginner’s Guide to CGI Scripting with Perl, Running a Guestbook.
This new version, a.k.a Pastepile, is a dirt simple Perl CGI program that creates a blog like pasting tool to be able to paste notes online or on a local server. Allows grabbing snippets of text or code for later use on whether on the local machine or another on the network. I made it sometime after studying John Callender’s tutorial when I was digging into learning about CGI and Perl several years ago.
History
Pastepile originated as a way to paste snippets of code and write short notes on configuration changes that I make on servers, including a Raspberry Pi that I run. The only requirement is the installation of a web server such as Apache. This little Pastepile tool made it easy to keep track of information related to the servers in one place and search-able via a browser. After using it in the is mode for a while, I cloned it and started to use it as a general place to paste info and write short notes. This makes it easy to save something while on one machine on the network and be able to retrieve it later on that machine or another.
Example of What it Looks Like
Subject: Running a form-to-email gateway at 19:04:44, Sat Feb 3, 2018 from 192.168.1.7
http://www.resoo.org/docs/perl/begperl/form_to_email.html
Subject: Slackware Linux Essentials at 12:10:03, Thu Feb 1, 2018 from 192.168.1.179
www.slackbook.org/html/index.html
Additions:Remote Address,Time,Reversed Order
Besides stripping down guestbook.cgi to remove code specifc to it’s guestbook function and cleaning up the code to reflect it’s new use, three functional code changes were made. One is to add a timestamp to keep track of when the entry was created. Another change made was showing the IP of the machine the post originates from by reading the environment variable $REMOTE_ADDR to keep track of where the post originates from. Many machines on my network have static IP’s so this is handy for me at least. The final change was to reverse the order of the listing. In guestbook.cgi a First In On Top ordering is the layout of the guestbook posts. For Pastepile I reversed it so the most recent and not the oldest post is on top of the list, Last In On Top ordering. This made sense as the most recently written notes are more likely to be important and I want those to be close to the top of the pile and let the file get long with the aging information at the bottom.
/p/
For ease of access via a shorter link a simple index.html redirector page was place in /var/www/p/, following a 4chan-esqe style of folder naming and a nice short link to get to the pastepile.cgi script, which lives in the /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ directory. The /p/ directory also holds the pastepile.html file that is created by pastepile.cgi as it’s data page.
Redirector Example for /var/www/p/index.html
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url='http://192.168.1.17/cgi-bin/pastepile.cgi'"/>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<p><a href="http://192.168.1.17/cgi-bin/pastepile.cgi">Redirect</a></p>
</BODY>
</HTML>
paste-pile-mover.sh
A helper script called pastepile-file-mover.sh, moves the pastepile.html, the data file created by pastepile.cgi from it’s default location to a date stamped file in a location set in the script BASEDIR/dir/filename. Where BASEDIR is your choice ( I use /var/www/p/), dir is the current year and filename is YYYYMMDD.html, so that that there is a year and date hierarchy. I allow this script to run at the start of the month via root CRON to “clean” out the Pastepile and archive the old one, much the same way that log are rotated.
0 0 1 * * /home/erick/bin/pastepile-file-mover.sh
pastepile-file-mover.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Move the pastepile.html file from it's default location to a date stamped
# file in a location BASEDIR/dir/filename
# So that it has year and date heirarchy
# For now, Monthly, Move pastepile over to year dir and datestamped HTML file
#0 0 1 * * /home/erick/bin/pastepile-file-mover.sh
BASEDIR=/var/www/p
# Testing
#BASEDIR=/tmp
dir=$(date +"%Y")
#echo $dir
#File name timestamped
filename=$(date +"%Y%m%d").html
#echo $filename
# Make the YEAR dir if it dow not exist.
if [ ! -d "$BASEDIR/$dir" ]; then
# Control will enter here if $DIRECTORY doesn't exist.
mkdir $BASEDIR/$dir
fi
# Do the move to the YEAR directory with the YYYYMMDD.html filename.
mv $BASEDIR/pastepile.html $BASEDIR/$dir/$filename
# This is needed make a new pastepile.html and chmod 666
# else pastepile.cgi does not work, it can't make it's own output file.
touch $BASEDIR/pastepile.html
chmod 666 $BASEDIR/pastepile.html
Last but not least pastepile.cgi
#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
# pastepile.cgi a fork of...
# guestbook.cgi - a simple guestbook script
# This program is copyright 1999 by John Callender.
# This program is free and open software. You may use, copy, modify,
# distribute and sell this program (and any modified variants) in any way
# you wish, provided you do not restrict others from doing the same.
# pastepile.cgi - guestbook.cgi, modded to become # a pastepile program. Erick Clasen Jan 25,2018
# This new version is a dirt simple CGI program that creates a blog like
# pasting tool to be able to paste notes online or on a local server.
# allows grabbing snippets of text or code for later use on whether
# on the local machine or another on the network.
$data_file = '/var/www/p/pastepile.html';
$max_entries = 0; # how many guestbook entries to save?
# set to '0' (zero) for infinite entries...
use CGI;
use Fcntl;
$query = new CGI;
unless ($action = $query->param('action')) {
$action = 'none';
}
print <<"EndOfText";
Content-type: text/html
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Raspberry Pi Server Paste Pile</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Raspberry Pi Server Paste Pile</H1>
<P><EM>$ENV{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/p/</EM></P>
<A HREF="../status/index.html">Back to Status Index</A>
<A HREF="../p/2018">2018 Paste Archive</A>
<P>You can <A HREF="#form">add your own subject and entry</A> using the form at the bottom of the page. Here we is has your pastes...</P>
<HR>
EndOfText
# Input action to add a new entry. ----------------------
if ($action eq 'Add entry') {
# process the form submission
# and assemble the guestbook entry
# Input the subect and the paste which is called a comment here in this code.
$subject = $query->param('subject');
$comment = $query->param('comment');
# clean up and fiddle with $subject
unless ($subject) {
$subject = 'No Subject';
if (length($subject) > 50) {
$subject = 'Subject line too long >50 chars';
}
# End Input action to add a new entry. ----------------------
}
# Add a time stamp, put in variable theTime. This allows the paste to be timestamped.
@months = qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec);
@weekDays = qw(Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun);
@digits = qw(00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 59 59);
($second, $minute, $hour, $dayOfMonth, $month, $yearOffset, $dayOfWeek) = localtime();
$year = 1900 + $yearOffset;
$theTime = "$digits[$hour]:$digits[$minute]:$digits[$second], $weekDays[$dayOfWeek] $months[$month] $dayOfMonth, $year";
# untaint variable
unless ($theTime =~ /^([^<]*)$/) {
die "couldn't untaint name: $theTime\n";
}
$theTime = $1;
# clean up and fiddle with $subject--------------------------------
$subject_clean = "$subject";
$subject_clean =~ s/, , /, /; # remove duplicate ', '
$subject_clean =~ s/^, //; # remove initial ', '
$subject_clean =~ s/, $//; # remove final ', '
if ($subject_clean =~ /^[,\s]+$/) {
# nothing but commas and whitespace
$subject_clean = 'Subject format wrong!!';
}
if (length($subject_clean) > 75) {
$subject_clean = 'Subject too long.';
}
# disable HTML tags
$subject_clean =~ s/</</g;
# untaint variable
unless ($subject_clean =~ /^([^<]*)$/) {
die "couldn't untaint subject_clean: $subject_clean\n";
}
$subject_clean = $1;
# clean up and fiddle with $comment----------------------------
if (length($comment) > 32768) {
$comment = '...overloaded blog buffer chars > 32768.';
}
unless ($comment) {
$comment = '...nothing to speak of.';
}
# fix line-endings
$comment =~ s/\r\n?/\n/g;
# lose HTML tags
$comment =~ s/</</g;
# untaint variable
unless ($comment =~ /^([^<]*)$/) {
die "couldn't untaint comment: $comment\n";
}
$comment = $1;
# end cleanup #comment-----------------------------------------
# assemble finished guestbook entry -- anything after this line until EndofText will show in the post!!!!!
# Enviroment variable for REMOTE_ADDR is grabbed and printed directly. No untainting, but probably safe to do.
$entry = <<"EndOfText";
<P><STRONG> Subject: $subject_clean </STRONG> at <EM>$theTime </EM> from <EM>$ENV{REMOTE_ADDR} </EM> <BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE>$comment</BLOCKQUOTE></P>
<HR>
EndOfText
# open non-destructively, read old entries, write out new
$all_entries .= $entry;
sysopen(ENTRIES, "$data_file", O_RDWR)
or die "can't open $data_file: $!";
flock(ENTRIES, 2) or die "can't LOCK_EX $data_file: $!";
while(<ENTRIES>) {
$all_entries .= $_;
}
if ($max_entries) {
# lop the tail off the guestbook, if necessary
@all_entries = split(/<HR>/i, $all_entries);
$entry_count = @all_entries - 1;
while ($entry_count > $max_entries) {
pop @all_entries;
$entry_count = @all_entries - 1;
}
$all_entries = join('<HR>', @all_entries);
}
# now write out to $data_file
seek(ENTRIES, 0, 0) or die "can't rewind $data_file: $!";
truncate(ENTRIES, 0) or die "can't truncate $data_file: $!";
print ENTRIES $all_entries or die "can't print to $data_file: $!";
close(ENTRIES) or die "can't close $data_file: $!";
}
# display the guestbook a.k.a pastepile.html
open (IN, "$data_file") or die "Can't open $data_file for reading: $!";
flock(IN, 1) or die "Can't get LOCK_SH on $data_file: $!";
while (<IN>) {
print;
}
close IN or die "Can't close $data_file: $!";
# display the form
print <<"EndOfText";
<A NAME="form"><H2>Add a comment/entry to the paste pile (no HTML):</H2></A>
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="pastepile.cgi">
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="right"><STRONG>Subject: </STRONG></TD>
<TD><INPUT NAME="subject" SIZE=30></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="right"><STRONG>Entry :</STRONG></TD>
<TD>
<TEXTAREA NAME="comment" ROWS=5 COLS=30 WRAP="virtual"></TEXTAREA>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR><TD COLSPAN=2> </TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD> </TD>
<TD><INPUT TYPE="submit" NAME="action" VALUE="Add entry"></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</FORM>
</BODY>
</HTML>
EndOfText
