Remote System Information Using CGI

Abbas_Riazi

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Aug 27, 2003

1 min read

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This is a handy utility to show system information of a remote computer by using common gateway interface known as CGI, a must have tool for administrators!

Download demo project - 63.7 Kb

Sample Image - RemoteSysInfo.jpg

Introduction

As most programmers know, CGI is an old but very useful techniques to create dynamic web pages. I use this technique for creating dynamic web pages that show system information. On the other hand, Administrators can put this program on their cgi-bin directory of web servers and getting information about their web servers like free memory, used memory, HDD space, system directories and etc remotely.

CGI Programming

Creating CGI based programs are an easy task. Below are steps that you should follow to create a CGI program:

Create a new console application. It is better to add support of MFC.
Add following line to stdafx.h:
```
#include <iostream>
```

Use cout to redirect outputs to user's browser! You can use HTML tags to format your texts.

Here is an example:

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    cout << "content-type: text/html\n\n";  //HTTP header information
    
    //printing Hello World! message on user's browser!
    cout << "<html><head><title>Test CGI</title></head>";
    cout << "<body><p>Hello World!</p></body></html>";

    return 0;
}

Compile the program and put it to cgi-bin directory of your web server. If it does not exist, create one and change it's permission to "Execute (includes scripts)". Figure 2 shows this step.

System Information

In my previous article, I showed you some ways to obtaining system information. Most of the code is taken from this article. By this program you can query system for these pieces of information.

Operating System Version (Thanks to PJ Naughter)
Computer Name
IP Address of Computer
User Name
Internet Explorer Version
Total RAM
Free Memory
Number of Hard Disk Drives
Hard Disk Total Space/Free Space/Used Space
CDROM Drives
Monitor Resolution
Color Depth
Number of CPUs (Thanks to Iain Chesworth)
CPU Speed
CPU Identifier
CPU Vendor Identifier
Operating System Folder
System Folder

Enjoy!