useful site http://httpd.apache.org/docs/

FAQ-SET100 : I SEE PERL SCRIPT'S SOURCE INSTEAD OF ITS EXECUTION
PROBLEM: When I try to execute the perl script through the web server, I see the perl script's source instead of the HTML result page of its execution !
SOLUTION: This is not a problem of AWStats but a problem in your web server setup. awstats.pl file must be in a directory defined in your web server to be a "cgi" directory, this means, a directory configured in your web server to contain "executable" files and not to documents files. You have to read your web server manual to know how to setup a directory to be an "executable cgi" directory (With IIS, you have some checkbox to check in directory properties, with apache you have to use the "ExecCGI" option in the directory "Directive").

Explicitly using Options to permit CGI execution

You could explicitly use the Options directive, inside your main server configuration file, to specify that CGI execution was permitted in a particular directory:

        <Directory /usr/local/apache/htdocs/somedir>

                Options +ExecCGI

        </Directory>

The above directive tells Apache to permit the execution of CGI files. You will also need to tell the server what files are CGI files. The following AddHandler directive tells the server to treat all files with the cgi or pl extension as CGI programs:

     AddHandler cgi-script cgi pl

Configuring Apache to permit CGI

In order to get your CGI programs to work properly, you'll need to have Apache configured to permit CGI execution. There are several ways to do this.

ScriptAlias

The ScriptAlias directive tells Apache that a particular directory is set aside for CGI programs. Apache will assume that every file in this directory is a CGI program, and will attempt to execute it, when that particular resource is requested by a client.

The ScriptAlias directive looks like:

        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/

The example shown is from your default httpd.conf configuration file, if you installed Apache in the default location. The ScriptAlias directive is much like the Alias directive, which defines a URL prefix that is to mapped to a particular directory. Alias and ScriptAlias are usually used for directories that are outside of the DocumentRoot directory. The difference between Alias and ScriptAlias is that ScriptAlias has the added meaning that everything under that URL prefix will be considered a CGI program. So, the example above tells Apache that any request for a resource beginning with /cgi-bin/ should be served from the directory /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/, and should be treated as a CGI program.

For example, if the URL http://dev.rcbowen.com/cgi-bin/test.pl is requested, Apache will attempt to execute the file /usr/local/apache/cgi-bin/test.pl and return the output. Of course, the file will have to exist, and be executable, and return output in a particular way, or Apache will return an error message.