[ILUG] Apache CGI configuration for personal web space?

[Cormac McClean]

Hi,

Doing a Linux Web Administration project with a class of 40 students,
split into 10 teams of 4, each team having access to their own Linux
server.

I'm doing some Perl/CGI with them (I know there are alternative technologies,
but they've done a bit of Perl and so using Perl/CGI doesn't mean
learning an additional language). Each team member has personal web space
in their home directory using 
	UserDir public_html
I want them to be able to run cgi scripts from their personal web space.
What is the best way of achieving this?

I am trying the directive 
	AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
which should allow any file with extension .cgi to be executed, without
needing to be in the web server's cgi-bin directory, but it's not working.
[Uncommented Directive, restarted server - still get the error message
"You don't have permission to access /~cmcclean/catalogue.cgi on this
server."
And the executable permission is set for this file (for others).]

Also tried a cgi-bin directory within the personal webspace, i.e.
	public_html/cgi-bin	
but I get a similar permissions problem.

Is there something I'm missing? Any suggestions welcome. Looking at
O'Reilly's "Apache" and "CGI Programming with Perl" books.

(We'll be examining the security aspects of cgi scripts next month.)

Thanks in advance,
Cormac.