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Using cpanel on my hosting account, I created a subdomain - e.g. www.clothing.mysite.com

A cgi-bin folder was automatically created in the directory for clothing.mysite.com. Do I need it? I'm only using the subdomain to install wordpress on it. I don't really understand what the cgi-bin folder is for and I'm happy to leave it if it doesn't harm anything. Any thoughts?

desertnaut
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Margo
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    delete it along with all the _anoying frontpage server extention files –  Feb 05 '11 at 07:33

4 Answers4

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cgi-bin historically was the only place where executable or script code (binaries, shell scripts, etc.) could be stored. It is mostly a historic relic since most hosts allow execution of scripts from anywhere.

David Pfeffer
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You can safely delete it. "cgi-bin" is hardly ever used these days.

janmoesen
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    It's good that you gave the brief answer first, but it's important to give some explanation. Without that, people can only trust that you're right. – Márton Tamás Jun 04 '18 at 10:38
17

You can safely delete "cgi-bin" folder, it's hardly ever used nowadays

Also beware that when your server got some malware scripts scans different folders and then hides on folders like cgi-bin because they rarely are checked now.

I even wrote a script before that "monitors" different folders in my server and alerts me if it found different scripts in there on my personal and clients servers too.

fedmich
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I haven't seen it mentioned but it might also be worth noting that since cgi-bin is traditionally used to execute scripts, some hosting providers might require you to edit your .htaccess file if you wish to execute scripts outside cgi-bin (same is true if you deleted your cgi-bin).

oliviaisarobot
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