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Installing Trac as CGI

Installing Trac as CGI

Please note that using Trac via CGI is the slowest deployment method available. It is slower than 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:

Use a ScriptAlias directive that maps an URL to the trac.cgi script (recommended)
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 enabled mod_alias module.

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 enabled mod_env module. It is also possible to set TRAC_ENV in trac.cgi. Just add the following code between "try:" and "from trac.web ...":

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

Or for TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR:

    import os
    os.environ['TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR'] = "/path/to/project/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).