ok. so i just got put in charge of one of our company's forums which was hosted on UBB v5.45c. Oldschool! I just renewed my member area license and downloaded the latest version of UBB.classic. I read, re-read, and re-read again the installation instructions for upgrading an older board to the 6x version. I uploaded all files correctly (everything in ASCII except the .gif and .jpg files). I set and re-checked permissions on all uploaded files (755 on everything except the "variable" files which are 777). I have run all the .cgi test files and none work. the only test file that works is "hello.pl" which returns my Perl version number and a little bit of text.

but no .cgi files are executing. I have deleted them, re-uploaded them in ascii, set permissions again, and still no dice. i have even called my web-hosting company which is totally stumped over this. the path to perl is identical to our UBB v5.45c .cgi files, same company, same everything. nothing has changed, all i know is the new UBB.classic .cgi files are not executing.

if anyone has any ideas it would be most appreciated. I do not want to delete everything on the site and upload a fresh installation, because i have thousands of posts and hundreds of users from the old incarnation of the forum i absolutely have to save.

Your old forum still work?

yeah it was working fine. it's now in 'closed' mode while i troubleshoot.