Python3 CGI HTTPS server fails on Unix

Question

This Python3 CGI HTTPS server used to work a few weeks (or months) ago, but now no longer works under Linux (Ubuntu). I tried on Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 and the behavi

Answer 1

I found the answer at:
http://www.castro.aus.net/~maurice/OddsAndEnds/blog/files/d2baf24c48b972f18836cac7a27734e2-35.html

The solution is to add:

http.server.CGIHTTPRequestHandler.have_fork=False # Force the use of a subprocess

before starting the server.

This is required for Mac and Unix implementation because, for efficiency reasons, they employ a fork to start the process that executes the CGI rather than creating a subprocess as used by other implementations (i.e. Windows). In a non-wrapped CGI implementation the fork works fine and the output is sent to the socket correctly, however, when the socket is SSL wrapped things go terribly wrong.

The solution is to force the Unix and Mac implementations to use a subprocess leaving the SSL socket happily working and having the Python Server transfer the output of the CGI script to the client while translating the output into SSL.

I still have no clue why this used to work!