Installing Trac as CGI

Please note that using Trac via CGI is the slowest deployment method available. It is slower than mod_wsgi, mod_python, FastCGI and even ​IIS/AJP on Windows.

CGI script is the entrypoint that web-server calls when a web-request to an application is made. The trac.cgi script can be created using the trac-admin <env> deploy <dir> command which automatically substitutes the required paths, see TracInstall#cgi-bin. Make sure the script is executable by your web server.

Apache web-server configuration

In ​Apache there are two ways to run Trac as CGI:

1. Use a ScriptAlias directive that maps a URL to the trac.cgi script (recommended)
2. Copy the trac.cgi file into the directory for CGI executables used by your web server (commonly named cgi-bin). You can also create a symbolic link, but in that case make sure that the FollowSymLinks option is enabled for the cgi-bin directory.

To make Trac available at http://yourhost.example.org/trac add ScriptAlias directive to Apache configuration file, changing trac.cgi path to match your installation:

ScriptAlias /trac /path/to/www/trac/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

Note that this directive requires that the mod_alias module is enabled.

If you're using Trac with a single project you need to set its location using the TRAC_ENV environment variable:

<Location "/trac">
  SetEnv TRAC_ENV "/path/to/projectenv"
</Location>

Or to use multiple projects you can specify their common parent directory using the TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR variable:

<Location "/trac">
  SetEnv TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR "/path/to/project/parent/dir"
</Location>

Note that the SetEnv directive requires that the mod_env module is enabled.

An alternative to SetEnv is editing TRAC_ENV or TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR in trac.cgi:

    os.environ['TRAC_ENV'] = "/path/to/projectenv"

    os.environ['TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR'] = "/path/to/parent/dir"

If you are using the ​Apache suEXEC feature please see ​ApacheSuexec.

On some systems, you may need to edit the shebang line in the trac.cgi file to point to your real Python installation path. On a Windows system you may need to configure Windows to know how to execute a .cgi file (Explorer -> Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types -> CGI).

Python Egg Cache

The egg-cache can be configured using an os.environ statement in trac.cgi, as shown above. To do the same from the Apache configuration, use the SetEnv directive:

SetEnv PYTHON_EGG_CACHE /path/to/dir

Put this directive next to where you set the path to the Trac environment, i.e. in the same <Location> block.

 <Location /trac>
   SetEnv TRAC_ENV /path/to/projenv
   SetEnv PYTHON_EGG_CACHE /path/to/dir
 </Location>

Using WSGI

You can run a ​WSGI handler ​under CGI. You can write your own application function, or use the deployed trac.wsgi's application.

Mapping Static Resources

See TracInstall#MappingStaticResources.

Adding Authentication

See TracInstall#ConfiguringAuthentication.

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See also: TracInstall, TracModWSGI, TracFastCgi, TracModPython