hi!! this is my first post!! our university student search has this form which uses POST method(the website is swd.bits-goa.ac.in/searchform1)..now i tried sending post data from cURL...
curl -o this.html --data "name=rohan&id=&hostel=&room=&branch=&search=Search" swd.bits-goa.ac.in/searchform1
now when i open the output file..the results aren't in there...whats the problem???
(i am new so i am not suppposed to post url's..but even this is the same)
Try a full URL?
Try tracing using strace/truss/tusc to see where it goes and what it sends.
Absolutely no output, or incorrect output? Seeing the FORM would help. Sometimes there are hidden fields which need to be sent. Do you know how to telnet to a web server? 
Firefox has a great add-on called Tamper Data, where you can view and edit POST variables. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tamper-data/
This way you can first see how your web browser really sends it, then you can see if the server responds if you change User-Agent, Referrer, etc.
@neutronscott:i have tried tamper-data and the post data is the same as the the thing i tried!!! thanks for the reply 
@DGPickett:i tried the full url..the only reason i didnt write it here is since i am a new to the forums,m not supposed to type in url's here :(...but ya !! will try the method you suggested..thanks for the reply!!
scott had a point about services wanting a correct referrer, cookie or other http artifact. If you did not write it, are you sure it does not have other requirements, like utf-8 or accepts jpeg or . . . .
also neutronscott-->no output!! i checked the code and there are no hidden fields!! i am relatively new to linux and don't quite know telnet!!! maybe the page is looking for a referrer like you said!!! thanx!!
---------- Post updated at 12:58 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:56 AM ----------
@DGpickeet: that may very well be the reason!! thanks i tried cURL(m learning it so..) on an other wesite and it worked great!! thanks both of you!!!
Telnet is just a kb to tcp socket and socket to screen tool, so you can use it on any socket except ssh. For instance, try this to simulate a browser accessing http://www.ibm.com/ with telnet:
$ (
echo 'GET / HTTP/1.0
'
sleep 5
) | telnet www.ibm.com 80
I'd give curl another go with setting Referrer (-e option) and maybe even spoof a desktop client (-A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20110319 Firefox/4.0")
If you can monitor the session of a normal browser, it may give you some ideas. What to monitor with changes depending on where the browser is. You could connect indirectly using something in the middle, like tcp_relay.c modified to log the streams. If you have access and things are not too busy, you can monitor the packets.
ah..sorry..this is kinda late..but i figured out this thing i guess!! as you pointed out it was the headers!! and ya..coming to it..there is this extension for chrome.."Request Maker" along with "Tamper data"..these both were quite useful..along with..ofcourse you ppl!! thank u