Hi folks. It is Saturday evening, 2 Aug 03, 9pm local time, and I just got my modperl 2 and apache 2 running on my dev box, built from source, and just ran my first handler successfully. Hurrah!!
I started on this wild adventure last Wednesday evening, so it took me around 3.5 days, working on and off. Thanks to the good folks on this list for helping me out, especially ged & perrin for their patience and insightful posts. I wanted to summarize what I learned, in case it helps someone else trying to do the same thing. CAUTION: I am a linux and apache and mod-perl NEWBIE; please don’t take the following as gospel, I could be (and likely am) wrong. But hopefully my points below will at least raise helpful issues. At times I had trouble as my knowledge was so rudimentary I couldn't read between the lines in the docs and in the posts. (For example, why do the docs casually say "make && make test && make install", when in fact you have to su over to root before the install step? <g>) So here are my notes on this process: * START CLEAN. Before starting, get rid of any and all old perls and apaches on the system. I had several instances of both due my installation fumblings -- I opted to reinstall Red Hat 9 to start fresh. If you do this, make sure you ask RH to install all the programming tools – on my first reinstall, I opted for the “server” configuration, which didn’t give me all the compiling tools needed, and so had to reinstall it again. Useful tools are updatedb and locate, and rpm –e. Took me a while to realize I could use wget to pull down .tar.gz sources via http; not knowing about wget, I was trying to get everything through ftp and that was a drag. * SEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND. I really liked the interface and search function at http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/mod_perl_C1/. Amazing resource. And searching for key terms or error messages on Google (main) and Google groups gives a good a sense of what might be going on. * MOD_PERL 2 IS STILL YOUNG. I didn’t realize going into this that at this point (2 Aug 03) Mod Perl 2 is still pre-release. Ack! My ISP runs Apache 2 so decided to install mod-perl 2, so I wanted AP2 and MP2 on my dev machine to match my ISP setup. (Funny – he got MP2 running in a few hours, vs. my 3.5 days – but then again, this was also my introduction to linux, apache, etc.) * DON’T DO EVERYTHING AS ROOT. Build and test all packages as non-root, then su to root to make install. Don’t make and make test as root. I did and ran into troubles and had to start again. * IF PERL DOESN’T PASS 100% OF ITS TESTS, STOP. Build perl 5.8.x first, and make sure it passes every test. Do not continue, do not pass go, do not collect $200 until all the tests run. I had to use EXPORT LANG=en_us to get around the UTF bug in Perl 5.8.0. * CPAN IS YOUR FRIEND. After building a successful perl 5.8.0, I used CPAN to install (in this order) CGI, LWP, Bundle::LWP, HTML::Parser. Now, I didn’t get 100% clean installs on the last two, and (in violation of the previous rule above) continued on with my fingers crossed. * DON’T MIX APACHE 1 AND APACHE 2 DOCS. Without realizing it, I was bouncing between the docs at the mod_perl site for 1.0 and 2.0. I didn’t realize how different the two packages are. Stay in one world or the other. The apache install went easily, following the instructions online and in Stas’ excellent book, practical mod_perl. * ONE ERROR. The mod_perl install went smoothly too, following the instructions online. I did get one error i: “filter/in_bbs_msg..............server side has failed (response code: 404),see t/logs/error_log for more details” but again I foolishly forged on ignoring it. Will this come back to haunt me? I hope not. Anyone want to tell me what this means? * DON’T MIX MODPERL1 AND MODPERL2 DOCS. I read Stas’ book, Practical mod_perl, and really found it useful and well-written. But I thought the whole book was about “mod-perl” – technically it isn’t. Most of the book is about MP1, and Chaps 24 and 25 are about MP2. My handlers were wrong, my httpd.conf was wrong – I was trying to run MP1 stuff on MP2. I made the same mistake reading ModPerl Developer’s Cookbook. The fault was mine – MP 1 and MP 2 are quite different. I just didn’t know this going into this process. * READ PRACTICAL MODPERL CHAP 23 “GETTING HELP AND ONLINE RESOURCES” FIRST. I noticed this chapter late in the game. Read it first. Those are my tidbits of advice. Good luck to you if you are a newcomer, and thanks to the veterans for providing all this great information, advice, and encouragement -- A __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com