Unix

To run POD successfully, you would need to make sure that you have:

• Linux or FreeBSD OS.  Current Linux package was compiled for i386 on Redhat 7.2, kernel 2.4.7 with gcc 3.0.1.  Current FreeBSD package was compiled for i386 on FreeBSD 4.5 with gcc 3.0.4.  Both run well on Apache 1.13.24.
• Access to a web server that supports cgi and allows user to run binary cgi scripts.  POD is a binary cgi script so it needs a web server that supports cgi to run.  Please note that some servers allow user to run perl scripts or other text-based scripts like asp, jsp or php.  That is different than binary scripts.  Please contact your server administrator to make sure that they do allow binary/compiled scripts to run.  Usually if you see your web hosting company advertise that they allow cgi/perl scripts, that means likely they allow you to run binary scripts because here the cgi usually means the compiled scripts like POD.  One simple way (actually, oversimplified way) to see if POD can run on your web server is to place fldb.exe in POD package into your server's cgi-bin directory, then type http://www.myserver.com/cgi-bin/fldb.exe?act=version into your web browser.  Assuming that POD has the URL as www.myserver.com/cgi-bin/fldb.exe, the above URL will return the version number for your copy of POD.  If you see a version number displayed, then POD will run for you for sure, provided that you set it up right later.  If you do not see a version number, but instead you see an error message like 405, 500, that does not necessarily mean POD will not run for you.  It could be that your cgi-bin directory was not set up correctly to run any script, etc.  In such case, please contact your server administrator to 1. determine if running binary script in your cgi-bin directory is allowed. 2. if binary script is allowed, try to work with them to solve the problem(s).  Potential causes of problem are listed in Problems & Solutions section. 
• gcc/g++ 3.0.1 if you elect to use POD for Linux, dynamically linked version (or gcc 3.0.4 for POD for FreeBSD, dynamically linked).  Because the dynamically linked version uses shared library, therefore your web server must have gcc/g++ 3.0 installed. Specifically, POD needs an alias named libstdc++.so.3 in /usr/lib that points to the actual shared library libstdc++.so.3.0.1 (of course you can delete the alias and rename the library to libstdc++.so.3, if so wished). POD also needs libgcc_s.so.1 in /usr/lib. Both of these two libraries are a direct result of installing gcc 3.0 into /usr/lib directory. Please have your hosting company to upgrade their gcc package to 3.0 if they did not already do so.  They should do the upgrade at you request because gcc is a very standard compiler, and your hosting company has the obligation to install the newest libraries.  gcc 3.0 can be downloaded from gcc.gnu.org.
  On the other hand, if you can't have your server administrator to install gcc for you, you can still run POD using the POD for unix, statically linked version (downloadable from http://www.ming-yi.org/download.html), which does not require gcc but has a bigger file size.  Be aware that it will load slower than the dynamically linked version because of its size.