[cobalt-users] how to make raq4 'gui' work with perl 5.6.1

[william ross <will@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

hello

I expect I'm not the only person who managed to completely bork the 
admin tools on a raq by allowing CPAN.pm to upgrade perl to 5.6.1. I 
am? oh.

i couldn't find a fix anywhere online, but i seem to have mended it, 
so here's a sketchy account of how. this is on a raq4, by the way, 
and i'm sorry if it's all old news. I couldn't find it in the list 
either...

Fortunately, it turns out that if you allow cpan.pm to install perl 
then it will put most of it /usr/local/lib/perl5/, leaving the 
original cobalt install safely preserved in /usr/lib/perl5/.

The only file which is lost completely is the  perl executable 
itself, /usr/bin/perl, unless you were a more sensible person than me 
and renamed it first. The other good news is that there is no 
fundamental problem with 5.6.1 and the cobalt tools. all you have to 
do is recreate the set of modules they require. i found it easiest to 
install some and copy others, but ymmv.

in summary:

1. install Quota.pm
2. install Locale::gettext.pm
3. copy old site_perl/Cobalt to new site_perl/
4. copy Pg.pm from old site_perl/i386-linux to new site_perl/i586-linux
5. copy old site_perl/i386-linux/auto/Pg/ to new site_perl/i586-linux/auto/Pg

and that was it. i would have preferred to reinstall DBD::Pg rather 
than copying the Pg XS over, but the postgres installation doesn't 
seem to have set the environment variables required by the makefile, 
so copying the old was easier.

If you don't already have DBI installed, then you'll need that too, 
and there may be other requirements that i'm unaware of because I 
happened to meet them. You can identify them, as i did, by repeatedly 
trying to run (for example) 
/usr/admserv/cgi-bin/.cobalt/siteList/siteList.cgi and then tracking 
down whatever it complains about.

here's a transcript, in case you're feeling lucky. remove the 
mid-line breaks, of course:

[root ] perl -MCPAN -e 'install Locale::gettext'
[root ] perl -MCPAN -e 'install Quota'
[root ] cp -r /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/Cobalt 
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/
[root ] cp /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux/Pg.pm 
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/i586-linux/
[root ] cp -r /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux/auto/Pg 
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/i586-linux/auto/


hope someone finds this useful.

will