Can't call method "verify" on an undefined value - perl

Question

• I am working to migrate a Linux server to a newer one from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04
• This server is responsible for executing several a number of Perl modules via crontabs.
• These Perl Modules rely heavily on 30-40 perl extensions.
• I have installed all Perl extensions and the crontabs are able to process successfully except for several Syntax errors caused by the newer versions of these PERL extensions.
• I need some help with modifying the syntax to get the Perl script to process as intended.
This is my error message:
2015/12/28 12:56:48 ./cms.pl 88 FATAL main - Can't call method "verify" on an undefined value at pm/Emails/Core.pm line 438.
Code:
#===================================================================================================
# Send an eamil
# Args: enable_clients?, BCC Arrayref [admin1#a.com, ...], Hashref { email_address, email_subject, email_body }
#===================================================================================================
sub pm::Emails::Core::send_email {
my ($self, $enable_clients, $bcc, $email) = #_;
# die('Invalid BCC array') unless $bcc;
die('Invalid Email hashref') unless ($email && $email->{email_address} && $email->{email_subject} && $email->{email_body});
$email->{email_address} = trim $email->{email_address}; # Trim the email address just to be sure no invalid emails sneak in
my $mime = undef;
my $smtp = undef;
###
# Get a handle to the logger
my $logger = Log::Log4perl->get_logger();
die('Failed to create logger') unless $logger;
###
###
# Send the email using the local SMTP server
# SPAM FILTER NOTES:
# We are sending the email as inlined HTML.
# Sending the email as a multipart with HTML & PlainText is getting flagged as SPAM.
{
my $msg = join(', ',
(
'Time:' . localtime(),
'Sending Email TO: ' . $email->{email_address},
#'BCC: ' . join(',', #$bcc),
'SUBJECT: ' . $email->{email_subject},
'Clients Enabled: ' . ($enable_clients ? 'true' : 'false')
)
);
$logger->warn($msg);
open(FILE, '>>/var/log/mail.log') or die('Failed to open mail log: /var/log/mail.log');
print FILE $msg . "\n";
close FILE;
}
###
if (!defined($self->{_phpversion_})) {
$self->{_phpversion_} = `php -r 'print phpversion();' 2>/dev/null`;
}
###
# Generate the MIME email message
$mime = MIME::Lite->new(
Subject => $email->{email_subject},
To => $email->{email_address},
Type => 'text/html',
Data => $email->{email_body},
'Reply-To' => 'test#test.com',
'Return-Path' => 'test#test.com',
From => 'test#test.com',
Organization => 'Testing',
'X-Mailer' => 'PHP' . $self->{_phpversion_}
);
###
# Check to see if we are sending the email to clients, if not then redirect to another account & update the subject
if ($enable_clients) {
$logger->warn('Sending email to clients is enabled!');
} else {
use Sys::Hostname;
$logger->warn('Sending email to clients is disabled!');
$email->{email_address} = 'test#test.com';
$email->{email_subject} = '<' . hostname . ' - ADMIN ONLY EMAIL> ' . $email->{email_subject};
$mime->replace(Subject => $email->{email_subject});
}
$mime->preamble('');
$mime->top_level(1);
$mime = $mime->as_string();
###
###
# Connect to the SMTP server & send the message
$logger->debug('Connecting to SMPT server');
$smtp = Net::SMTP->new('localhost', Timeout => 60, Debug => 0, Hello => 'test.com');
$logger->debug('Connected to SMPT server');
###
###
# Verify we can send the email to the included addresses
foreach my $email_address (($email->{email_address}), #$bcc) {
$logger->debug('Verifying Email address: ' . $email_address);
next if $smtp->verify($email_address);
$logger->warn('Failed to verify email address: ' . $email_address . ', re-connecting to SMPT');
$smtp = Net::SMTP->new('localhost', Timeout => 60, Debug => 1, Hello => 'test.com');
die('Failed to reconnect to SMPT server') unless $smtp;
last;
}
###
###
# Send the email message
$smtp->mail('test#test.com');
$smtp->bcc(#$bcc, { Notify => ['FAILURE','DELAY', 'SUCCESS'] });
$smtp->to($email->{email_address}, { Notify => ['FAILURE','DELAY', 'SUCCESS'] });
$smtp->data; # This will start the data connection for the message body
$smtp->datasend( $mime ); # This will send the data for the message body
$smtp->dataend; # This will end the message body and send the message to the user
$smtp->quit;
###
use List::Util qw[min];
sleep(min(1, int(rand(2))));
}
Any help on this is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You don't create the $smtp object (using $smtp = Net::SMTP->new(...)) until three lines after you try to call the verify() method on it. So of course it's going to be undefined at that point.
The only way that this could ever work is if the $smtp is also created earlier on in code that you haven't shown us. But assuming that you have shown us all mentions of $smtp, then this code can't possibly have worked on the old server only. This is not a problem that is caused by a newer version of Perl, it's a logic error that would never have worked.
The obvious way to fix this is to re-order the code so that the object is created before you try to use it. But as I can only see a small amount of the code, I have no way of knowing whether this would have knock-on effects elsewhere.
Have you considered paying a Perl programmer to help you carry out these migrations? Expecting free consultancy from StackOverflow isn't really a sustainable business model :-/
Update: Ok, so now you've added more code, we can see that the $smtp is initialised a few lines before the call to verify. So why are you getting the error?
If you read the documentation for Net::SMTP, in the section describing the new() method, it says:
On failure undef will be returned and $# will contain the reason for
the failure.
It looks like this is what is happening. But your code isn't checking the return code from the new() and is assuming that it will always work - which is a pretty strange assumption to make. To fine out what is going wrong, you'll need to add some debugging output to the two lines that create your SMTP object. Where you have:
$smtp = Net::SMTP->new(...);
Change it to:
$smtp = Net::SMTP->new(...)
or die $#;
That way, if you fail to connect to the SMTP server, your program will die with a (hopefully) useful error message which will enable you to investigate further.
Incidentally, I don't know where your code comes from, but no-one really recommends Net::SMTP these days. It's all rather low-level. You would be better off looking at Email::Sender or Email::Stuffer (that's the kind of useful knowledge that a Perl programmer would bring to this project..

Answer 2

Hey Guys just Wanted to follow up on this problem. I tried all of your suggestions and was unable to get a solution.
However more in-depth research of the SMTP/Mail running on this machine revealed that it was running Postfix, it turns out this script was written for SendMail. Simply did the following:
Uninstall Postfix-
sudo apt-get purge postfix
Install Sendmail-
sudo apt-get install sendmail
All was resolved, thank you guys for all your help.