SLOWCGI(8)

NAME
slowcgi - a FastCGI to CGI wrapper server

SYNOPSIS
slowcgi [-d] [-p path] [-s socket] [-u user]

DESCRIPTION
slowcgi is a server which implements the FastCGI Protocol to execute CGI scripts. FastCGI was designed to overcome the CGI protocol's scalability and resource sharing limitations. While CGI scripts need to be forked for every request, FastCGI scripts can be kept running and handle many HTTP requests.

nginx(8) intentionally does not implement the CGI protocol. slowcgi is a simple server that translates FastCGI requests coming from nginx(8) to the CGI protocol. It executes the requested CGI script and translates its output back to the FastCGI protocol.

Modern web frameworks and web applications usually come with the capability to run as FastCGI servers. slowcgi is not intended for these applications.

slowcgi opens a socket at /var/www/run/slowcgi.sock, owned by www:www, with permissions 0660. It will then chroot(8) to /var/www and drop privileges to user "www".

The options are as follows:

-d  Do not daemonize. If this option is specified, slowcgi will run in the foreground and log to stderr.

-p path
    chroot(2) to path. A path of / effectively disables the chroot.

-s socket
    Create and bind to alternative local socket at socket.

-u user
    Drop privileges to user instead of default user www.

STANDARDS
Mark R. Brown, April 1996, FastCGI Specification.

D. Robinson, K. Coar, October 2004, RFC 3875, The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1.

BUGS
slowcgi only implements the parts of the FastCGI standard needed to execute CGI scripts. This is intentional.