[csw-users] Perl 5.8.8 and CSWmodperl

[Cory Omand]

NOTICE: If you make use of Apache 1.3.x and CSWmodperl, and have 
recently upgraded to the latest version of Perl in unstable, please read 
the following notice.  If you are using Apache 2.x and CSWap2modperl, 
you can safely ignore this message.

It was recently reported that Apache 1.3.x and CSWmodperl are impacted 
by the new perl 5.8.8 package released to unstable.  When restarting the 
apache server after updating perl, server startup will report the 
following error:

bash$ /etc/init.d/cswapache start
[Sat Feb 11 13:25:52 2006] [error] Can't locate strict.pm in @INC [...]

This is due to the fact that mod_perl 1.x appears to embed a static @INC 
path from the version of perl that it was compiled with.  It will not 
get a new @INC path from perl, as mod_perl 2.x will.

Until a new version of mod_perl 1.x is released, it is recommended that 
you *not* update your perl package, if possible.  If you have already 
updated, or require perl 5.8.8 for some other reason, there is a simple 
workaround for apache and mod_perl.  Add the following lines to the top 
of your /opt/csw/apache/bin/apachectl:

PERL5LIB=/opt/csw/share/perl/5.8.8:/opt/csw/lib/perl/5.8.8
export PERL5LIB

This will allow your server to start up and locate the core perl modules.

Sorry for any inconvenience,
- C.


-- 
Cory Omand <comand at blastwave.org>