Annotation of doc/build/systemperl_howto.html, revision 1.1
1.1 ! matthew 1: <html>
! 2: <head>
! 3: <title>The LON-CAPA systemperl HOW-TO</title>
! 4: </head>
! 5: <body>
! 6:
! 7: <h1>The LON-CAPA systemperl HOW-TO</h1>
! 8: <p>
! 9: The LON-CAPA systemperl rpm holds all of the perl modules required by LON-CAPA
! 10: but not a part of LON-CAPA. Additionally, other libraries have been included
! 11: as well.
! 12: This document describes in some detail the commands and
! 13: processes necessary to build a systemperl rpm.
! 14: My goal in writing this document is to never, ever have to do this again.
! 15: The difficulty is not simply the tedium involved in determining the
! 16: dependencies and build/install orders of the packages.
! 17: The real chore is the severity of an error - if the systemperl rpm is not
! 18: complete, LON-CAPA will not work properly.
! 19: </p><p>
! 20: <i>Fun Fact:emacs thinks 'systemperl' is a misspelling of 'distemper'.</i>
! 21: </p>
! 22:
! 23: <ol>
! 24:
! 25: <li>Find a machine to build on</li>
! 26: <p>
! 27: In the case of the 3.5 systemperl, we were still support Red Hat 6.2, so
! 28: we needed two machines. The best situation would be to have a clean install
! 29: of RedHat and LON-CAPA (fully updated) installed in it as well. This is easy
! 30: for RedHat 7.3 but less easy for RedHat 6.2.
! 31: For the latter case, I used data.lite.msu.edu. This caused some problems so
! 32: you should thoroughly test your rpm by doing a few test installations on
! 33: little-used machines - preferably access servers that are not used regularly.
! 34: </p>
! 35:
! 36: <li>Set up your work environment</li>
! 37: <p>
! 38: You will need to set up directories. I used <tt>/root/systemperl/</tt>
! 39: as my base directory on data.lite.msu.edu. I had to make the following
! 40: directories:
! 41: <pre>
! 42: mkdir /root/systemperl
! 43: mkdir /root/systemperl/modules
! 44: mkdir /root/systemperl/root
! 45: mkdir /root/systemperl/root/usr
! 46: mkdir /root/systemperl/oldrpm
! 47: mkdir /root/systemperl/oldrpm/var
! 48: mkdir /root/systemperl/oldrpm/var/lib
! 49: mkdir /root/systemperl/oldrpm/var/lib/rpm
! 50: </pre>
! 51: The <tt>rpm</tt> directory is required by rpm but it can't seem to make
! 52: the directory itself. <i>Fun Fact: rpm --usage causes a segfault on
! 53: RedHat 7 systems.</i>
! 54: </p>
! 55:
! 56: <li>Get the old systemperl</li>
! 57: <p>
! 58: Typically found living somewhere on Zaphod. I suggest, as root, doing
! 59: </p>
! 60: <pre>
! 61: find /home -name "*systemperl*"
! 62: </pre>
! 63: <p>
! 64: The rest of this document assumes you're working with
! 65: <tt>LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.4-1.i386.rpm</tt> as the previous version.
! 66: The new version will be <tt>LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.5-1.i386.rpm.</tt>
! 67: </p>
! 68:
! 69: <li>Figure out what was in the old rpm contains</li>
! 70: <p>
! 71: Extract the rpm to a test directory. I suggest
! 72: <tt>/root/systemperl/oldrpm</tt>
! 73: <pre>
! 74: rpm --install --force --noscripts --nodeps -r /root/systemperl/oldrpm LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.4-1.i386.rpm
! 75: </pre>
! 76: List all the files (ls -lR) and see what perl modules and libraries are in it.
! 77: You will probably need to get all of these modules and libraries.
! 78: </p><p>
! 79: To get a list of new modules you may need to get, grep the loncapa source tree
! 80: using the following simple command:
! 81: <pre>
! 82: find /home/matthew/loncapa -name "*.p[lm]" -exec grep "^use " {} \; \
! 83: | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | perl -pe 's/([\(\)\;]|\s+$)//g; $_.="\n"' | \
! 84: grep -v ^Apache | sort -u
! 85: </pre>
! 86: </p>
! 87:
! 88: <li>Get source code for libraries you need to include</li>
! 89: <p>
! 90: You may need to include libgd or some other library in the systemperl.
! 91: Google for the library and seek out the home page of the project developing it.
! 92: You'll probably wind up with a tarball instead of an rpm. (If you can find an
! 93: rpm for all the systems you have to support I suggest just requiring people to
! 94: install the rpm directly instead of repackaging it (which I won't talk about).)
! 95: So untar it and, if you're lucky, it will use a configure script to determine
! 96: how to compile the package. For example:
! 97: <pre>
! 98: tar zxf gd-2.0.9.tar.gz
! 99: cd gd-2.0.9
! 100: ./configure --prefix /root/systemperl/root/usr/
! 101: make
! 102: make install
! 103: </pre>
! 104: </p><p>
! 105: If you find later that some perl modules are being compiled against this
! 106: library (such as <tt>GD.pm</tt>), you will want to be sure you have this
! 107: installed properly on the machine you're building on. I suggest:
! 108: <pre>
! 109: rm -rf gd-2.0.9
! 110: tar zxf gd-2.0.9.tar.gz
! 111: cd gd-2.0.9
! 112: ./configure
! 113: make
! 114: make install
! 115: </pre>
! 116: </p>
! 117:
! 118: <li>Get new versions of perl modules</li>
! 119: <p>
! 120: I used CPAN.
! 121: <pre>
! 122: # perl -MCPAN -e shell
! 123: </pre>
! 124: By issuing 'get <modulename>' commands you can grab all the files you need.
! 125: </p><p>
! 126: However, where the modules end up is another story. The default storage
! 127: place for modules is <tt>/root/.cpan/sources/...</tt>.
! 128: I have not found a reliable way to set this supposedly configurable option.
! 129: Issue a "<tt>o conf</tt>" to see what options are available in the CPAN shell.
! 130: One method might be issuing the following commands (outside of the CPAN shell):
! 131: <pre>
! 132: cd /root/.cpan
! 133: find . -name "*.tar.gz" -exec rm {} \;
! 134: perl -MCPAN -e shell
! 135: # Do your module downloading
! 136: find . -name "*.tar.gz" -exec mv {} /root/systemperl/modules \;
! 137: </pre>
! 138: Do not simply issue the above commands without knowing what they do.
! 139: </p><p>
! 140: The method I used was slightly more iterative, where I copied each *.tar.gz out
! 141: as it came in.
! 142: </p>
! 143:
! 144: <li>Compile the Perl Modules</li>
! 145: <p>
! 146: For each module you grabbed, you'll need to issue the following commands
! 147: to compile it:
! 148: <pre>
! 149: tar zxf <modulename>.tar.gz
! 150: cd <modulename>
! 151: perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/root/systemperl/root
! 152: make
! 153: make test
! 154: make install
! 155: </pre>
! 156: The <tt>make test</tt> is probably not necessary in some cases. Some packages
! 157: require information from you during the <tt>perl Makefile.PL</tt> step.
! 158: Some packages will complain that you don't have prerequisite packages
! 159: installed.
! 160: If you have already downloaded these packages you will need to install them on
! 161: the live system you are building the package on. For example, GDGraph will not
! 162: compile without GD being installed on the machine. So you must build GD.pm
! 163: <b>and</b> install it on the current machine by doing
! 164: <pre>
! 165: cd GD-<version>
! 166: perl Makefile.PL
! 167: make
! 168: make install
! 169: </pre>
! 170: before you attempt to compile GDGraph.pm.
! 171: <b>Note</b>: There is no <tt>make test</tt> for GD.pm.
! 172: </p><p>
! 173: Of course, GD depends on the library libgd.so. Thus, we need to have
! 174: installed libgd prior to all of this. <i>There is no automatic way of
! 175: settling these dependencies at this time.</i>
! 176: </p>
! 177:
! 178: <li>Package it together</li>
! 179: <p>
! 180: Ahh, building an rpm. Legends tell of days when you had to work long and
! 181: hard to build an rpm. These days we have Scott Harrison's <tt>make_rpm.pl</tt>
! 182: script which does the hard work for us. Since you're likely to have to
! 183: do this a lot, making a shell script might be wise:
! 184: <pre>
! 185: [root@data systemperl]# cat make_systemperl.sh
! 186: find ./root | perl make_rpm.pl LON-CAPA-systemperl 3.5 '' '' ./root
! 187: </pre>
! 188: </p><p>
! 189: <b>NOTE</b>: A modification had to be made to make_rpm.pl in order for it to
! 190: accept a name of LON-CAPA-systemperl. By default the make_rpm.pl script does
! 191: not allow for non-alphanumeric characters in the package name. This bites.
! 192: So you'll want to bypass that test in the make_rpm.pl script.
! 193: </p><p>
! 194: The invocation of make_rpm.pl given above omits a lot of options.
! 195: If you need to do something special with your systemperl rpm I suggest you
! 196: read the help available on make_rpm.pl.
! 197: </p>
! 198:
! 199: <li>Test installation</li>
! 200: <p>
! 201: So, you've made an rpm. You should be proud.
! 202: You could be even prouder if you knew the thing worked.
! 203: So find a machine to test on. I suggest either a little-used access server
! 204: or a new machine you don't intend to keep around.
! 205: </p><p>
! 206: Do not simply install it on the machine you built on and decide it works.
! 207: The process above only gives you the modules LON-CAPA depends on. It does
! 208: not tell you which modules those modules depend on. Only actual use will
! 209: tell you if your system is complete.
! 210: </p><p>
! 211: Install your rpm on the system
! 212: <pre>
! 213: rpm --install --force LON-CAPA-systemperl-3.5.-1.rpm
! 214: </pre>
! 215: and install the new loncapa. I suggest testing the following components:
! 216: <ul>
! 217: <li>kerberos 4 authentication</li>
! 218: <li>kerberos 5 authentication</li>
! 219: <li>spreadsheet, specifically excel output of spreadsheets</li>
! 220: <li>statistics, specifically the degree of difficulty graphs</li>
! 221: <li>A randomlabel problem</li>
! 222: <li>search and search results</li>
! 223: <li>enrollment upload</li>
! 224: </ul>
! 225: If there are any problems you have likely forgotten a library or have a bad
! 226: version of the library.
! 227:
! 228: </ol>
! 229: </body>
! 230: </html>
FreeBSD-CVSweb <freebsd-cvsweb@FreeBSD.org>
![[BACK]](/icons/back.gif){kind=icon}
Return to systemperl_howto.html CVS log ![[TXT]](/icons/text.gif){kind=icon}
![[DIR]](/icons/dir.gif){kind=icon}
Up to [LON-CAPA] / doc / build