I have a website with the facility to send e-mails to the webmaster and the Hon Sec using CGI. There is a low level checking procedure which checks for a valid e-mail address by format [email protected]

The system seems to work fine in that messages do get sent to both webmaster and secretary but messages won’t be sent unless the sender supplies an email of the correct form (even though it is a made-up one).

However recently we have both received completely blank messages. Can anyone explain to me what is happening?

This is the CGI code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use CGI qw(:standard);
use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser);
use strict;

my $title = param(‘title’);
my $first = param(‘firstname’);
my $surname = param(‘surname’);
my $em = param(’email’);
my $loc = param(‘loc’);
my $comments = param(‘comments’);
my $fullname = “”;

if ($title ne “”)
{ $fullname .= $title;}

$fullname .= ” “;
$fullname .= $first;
$fullname .= ” “;
$fullname .= $surname;

print header;
print start_html(“Results”);

# Set the PATH environment variable to the same path

# where sendmail is located:

$ENV{PATH} = “/usr/sbin”;

# open the pipe to sendmail

open (MAIL, “|/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t”) or
&dienice(“Can’t fork for sendmail: $!n”);

# change this to your own e-mail address

my $recipient = ‘[email protected]‘;

# Start printing the mail headers

# You must specify who it’s to, or it won’t be delivered:

print MAIL “To: $recipientn”;

# From should probably be the webserver.

print MAIL “From: JPAGgn”;

# print a subject line so you know it’s from your form cgi.

print MAIL “Subject: JPAG Guestbook messagenn”;

# Now print the body of your mail message.

print MAIL “From: $fullname ( ” . $em . ” )” . “nn”;
print MAIL “Location: $locn”;
print MAIL “Comments: $commentsn”;

# Be sure to close the MAIL input stream so that the

# message actually gets mailed.

close(MAIL);

open GBTRIAL, “>>GBFile.txt”;
print GBTRIAL $fullname;
print GBTRIAL “, “;
print GBTRIAL $loc;
print GBTRIAL “n”;
print GBTRIAL $comments;
print GBTRIAL “n”;
print GBTRIAL “n”;
close GBTRIAL;

# Now print a thank-you page

print <<EndHTML;
<h2>Thank You</h2>
<p>Thank you for writing!</p>
<p>Use Back Button to return to previous pages.</p>

<p>Your message was as follows</p>
<p>$comments</p>

<p>From: $fullname $loc $em</p>
EndHTML

print end_html;

# The dienice subroutine handles errors.

sub dienice {
my($errmsg) = @_;
print “<h2>Error</h2>n”;
print “<p>$errmsg</p>n”;
print end_html;
exit;
}