Error 129: Cannot Find Path File

Last Updated: 08 Aug 2014Hits: 7781
I'm using SSI Web 8.3.6 and am getting an Error 129 in my Admin Module. What does it mean and how can I fix it?

This actual meaning of this message is Can't find file $StudyName_path.cgi. Looked in: $UnixPath;$CommonCGIPath;$CGIBINRootPath.

There are several things you can check to try to solve this problem.

  1. Does the error occur each time you test the survey, or just once? It would be unusual to see a path file error for a small percentage of respondents. If there was a problem with the paths, it should affect every respondent.
  2. Are you placing your files on the server in the correct location? Some servers may be configured in such a way that what you type into the URL is not really the same place as where you upload the files. Check the path to make sure it is pointing to the right place.
  3. Are the permissions of your survey files and folders set correctly on the server? You can check this with an FTP program such as FileZilla. The appropriate parameters are found here: https://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/server-setup
  4. Does the case match between the name of your study and the study name that you are passing in? For example "MyStudy" will not match "mystudy". This is a common cause for this error.
  5. If you are manually uploading your files via FTP/SFTP software, are you sending the files in binary mode? If you are uploading the files in text mode, some data may be dropped.
  6. If you're using a SSL, are you specifying https and not http? Are you uploading via SSH?
  7. Is your database name, database username, and database password correctly set in SSI Web? Make sure your database information on the self-hosting tab is correct.
  8. Make sure the "studyname" variable is being sent to the perl script.
  9. Make sure the studyname_path.cgi file resides either in the admin folder or the cgi-bin folder for common cgi-bin setups.
  10. Double check the User-Agent in case a bot or an automaton caused a replay on the file and didn't send that field. In this case you can safely ignore the error.