I have a server that I can ssh into but that's it. Otherwise it is totally closed off from the outside world. I'm trying to deploy some scripts I wrote to it but they have several Perl dependencies (Params::Validate, XML::Simple, etc.) I can't get them via yum since our satellite server doesn't have those packages and the normal CPAN install won't work either since the host is so restricted. Moving the module sources over and compiling is extremely tedious. I've been doing that for over a day, trying to resolve dependencies, with no end in sight. Is there any way around this? Any help is greatly appreciated.
If you can, set up a parallel system as close as possible (as far as architecture, and perl version) to your closed system, and install all your dependencies there into a separate lib directory using local::lib. Then you can simply scp over that directory to your closed system, and again using local::lib (and setting up some environment variables), your code will be able to utilize that directory.
See this, it explains multiple methods that you can use to get CPAN modules into production.
Have you tried cpan minus? If not, here's how to get it.
curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - App::cpanminus
You can use it with local::lib. :-D
Chromatic has a great post on how to even get a newer(and multiple) version(s) of perl onto a restricted system.
If you can change your hosting provider, this would be a good time to switch ;-) (I personally think Linode rocks!).
Assuming that is not the case, you can try to go with the option of setting a parallel system as #Ether suggested.
On the other hand, if the modules you are using and their dependencies are pure Perl modules, you should be able to use PAR::Packer to package your script and its dependencies and scp a single file over to the host.
I use SSH tunneling to tunnel from the remote server back to a local proxy server. That way you can install whatever Modules you need.
Just set the http_proxy variable to the local port that is remote forwarded (If that makes sense) from your local machine.
i.e.
ssh user#remote -R 3128:proxy_ip:3128 (for a tunnelling a Squid setup)
then on the remote server in cpan
o conf http_proxy=http://localhost:3128
o conf commit
Related
I have my own personal perl instance, using perlbrew and a local cpan instance. I put in a bit of effort to get cpan to work for my local install. I've configured code and tested it using this perl.
I now want to ensure anyone on the computer can use the perl code I wrote, meaning ensuring that the cpan modules I used are available to all, even those that can't access my home directory.
Unfortunately, I can't configure and use cpan as root user. There are a few reasons why this would be difficult, but the biggest is that I am using my personal cert to authenticate myself as part of connecting to the CPAN repo (needed due to the configuration of the system). I don't want to make my cert available to everyone for connecting to CPAN.
I'm wondering if, instead of fixing the root cpan instance and trying to hunt down all the modules I'm using with cpan, I can simply copy the modules I already have. I'm running with the same perl version and on the same architecture, so the modules in my personal home directory should be the right ones.
The problem is that perllocal.pod seems to hard code locations relative to where my instal was done, so a simply copy paste is not enough. Is there another easy way, possible a perl utility, to copy my local CPAN modules and perl lib directory over to the root perl lib directory?
Probably, but why don't you just give them permission to your perlbrew-installed perl. Then just continue to use #!/home/ikegami/usr/perlbrew/perls/5.22.0t/bin/perl or whatever.
If you don't know exactly what you have installed, you could have a look at Dist::Surveyor
If you already know what all of your deps are, you can list them in a cpanfile and then take a snapshot with Carton and use the generated cpanfile.snapshot to install the correct versions in the new location
you can clone the whole CPAN to your server for everyone to install
minicpan -l ~/CPAN -r http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN/ [-f]
I've already read related threads like these, but they do not fully capture our situation.
This is on a firewalled machine. No net access. We can ftp files to folders and install modules from there.
We have CHMOD 777 for our users on some folders. We can install Perl modules if we locally build them by downloading the relevant .pm files. But when these files cannot install, we do not have any cpan or cpanm.
I'd like to install, for example, HTML::Restrict. If I do the download + install thing, the Restrict.pm gives me this error:
/lib/HTML/Restrict.PM:328: Unknown command paragraph "=encoding UTF-8"
Reading a bit online suggests that this could be an old Perl problem. We use 5.8.x. Our own dev machines have the luxury of 5.16.x and internet access so installing module is a cinch. Anyway, one of my older machines also has 5.8.x, and installing the module via cpanminus worked there (with internet).
So, question: is it possible to install "cpanminus" (cpanm) through FTP, then upload specific module files to the server through FTP too, and then go into shell and install modules via cpanm by pointing it to respective .pm files?
Thank you for any pointers.
You should take a look at perldoc perlmodinstall which goes into detail about how to install a module from its distribution. It follows what should be a familiar incantation
Decompress
Unpack
Build
Test
Install
Assuming you're on a Linux system, this commonly takes take the form of
gzip -d My-Module-Distribution.tar.gz
tar -xof My-Module-Distribution.tar
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
But after the Unpack stage you will often find a README file or other text file that will describe any unusual steps to be taken
Clearly some of these steps can be combined. For instance, most people will probably want to use
tar -xvfz My-Module-Distribution.tar.gz
to avoid having to invoke gzip separately. Likewise, the make system will force a build phase as a prerequisite if you use just
make test
without the preceding make
The linked document has a lot to say about how to install on other platforms, should you not be running a Linux variant
I still don't really understand your thinking, but you can get a stand-alone version of cpanm using curl. For instance
curl -sS --location https://cpanmin.us/ --output cpanm
then you should be able to just copy it to your target machine, put it on your PATH, and do
cpanm HTML-Restrict-2.2.2.tar.gz
but I doubt if you will find any change to the specific errors you are getting
I have a Linux server that has no access to the internet (access is prevented by a firewall). I would like to install a new Perl. What are my options and what is the best way to do this? The system Perl (included in OS installation) must remain unchanged.
I have been using perlbrew and I think it is the best way to do an online installation. But all the steps involved in perlbrew seem to require internet access: you download it from the net, it downloads new Perl versions from the net etc. and I haven't found a glue how to make it work offline.
If perlbrew is out of question I could build Perl from source into a custom location on the server. I assume that this could end up being complicated, time-consuming and error-prone. And every time I update Perl I have make a new build manually.
There can also be other ways to install that I'm not currently aware of. And of course I could stick with the system Perl but it is an outdated version and I'm already using the new syntax features. Or I could start negotiations to change the firewall policy to allow internet access for perlbrew.
But all the steps involved in perlbrew seem to require internet access
Not if properly configured.
To install perlbrew itself off-line, install the App-perlbrew dist. Following its dependencies manually is a chore, so instead prepare a MiniCPAN mirror (with -p to include Perl dists), take it over to the target machine and configure CPAN to use the local mirror. Run cpan App::perlbrew to install.
After perlbrew is installed, run its mirror command to configure a CPAN mirror into $PERLBREWROOT/Config.pm. Edit this file to change it to the local MiniCPAN mirror. Drop Perl dist tarballs into $PERLBREWROOT/dists/.
Be aware that compiling Perl requires a working C compiler toolchain, and optionally the development files for libdb (BerkeleyDB) and gdbm. (Read the INSTALL file once over, even though perlbrew's autoconfiguration and Perl's configure.SH defaults hide these details from you.)
The compiler toolchain is probably much more difficult to procure off-line, unless the OS installation has already been used before for compiling other C stuff.
There's nothing that special about perlbrew. If you aren't going to use it to download the Perl sources, it's not saving you that much. Once you have the Perl sources, you just need to configure and install it:
% ./Configure -des -Dprefix=/path/to/installation
% make install
Once done, everything for that Perl is under that installation path.
I dislike perlbrew mostly because it hides from people how amazingly simple this task is so they feel like they can't do it on their own.
Have you considered attacking it from a different direction? Keeping this up-to-date is going to be a pain if you have to request internet access each time. Likewise, if you've missed out/misconfigured any packages in your CPAN mirror it's difficult to correct once you're actually trying to use them.
Perhaps just build a small VM with a cut-down linux + perl + modules. Keep that up-to-date at your end and just take the whole lot in on a USB stick. You'd have a known-working easy-to-setup installation.
What I personally do is using git checkout when I'm offline (and not on vacation). Once you have the whole git work directory, it's trivial to build any released version by checking out the tags:
git checkout v5.17.4
git clean -f # cleanup previously compiled .o files etc
sh ./Configure ...
Depending on how you can transfer files to your host, this can be handy, since you you can also setup a private git repo there so other computer can git push new commits to there.
I am wanting to create an install script in the fashion of npm's (curl http://example.com/install.sh | sh) but it leaves me asking the question: can I just write the script in perl? As far as I know, perl is installed by default on at least ubuntu, RHEL & OS X - so I'm wondering in the year 2011, can I not write shell and still be generic enough for everyone? Is there a third and better option?
This would be targeting a user's development box, not staging or production.
What I want to do specifically is use this install script to bootstrap a development environment easily without the overhead of creating and maintaining packages. The script would have 4 steps:
check and make sure git is installed
use git to clone a repo to cwd
pull down and save a perl control script to /usr/bin, make it executable
add some environment variables (related post: linux cross-distro environment variable modification via script?)
That's it. My thinking is this is simple and generic enough to use a bootstrap script rather than a package. And my target audience is a user's unix or linux local development system.
The best option is to simply use the existing, well-oiled and -used (development) toolchain for the language the target app is written in. Not doing so frivolously discards the network effects gained from the ecologies that have grown around them.
C: GNU autotools
Haskell: Cabal
Perl: EU::MM, M::B, M::I
etc. etc.
Installing from the Web should be reserved for conveniently bootstrapping a user's system into the development environment.
Do tell more details about your software to get less general advice.
Edit: response to your addendum.
I dissuade you from a Web installer. This isn't bootstrapping an installation tool, this is plain installation of software and it should be done with with e.g. a Module::Build subclass.
I think perl is ubiquitous enough for you to write your installer in it. Shell is a lot more awkward anyway.
You might want to consider actually packaging your application as a deb or rpm or even using makeself rather than providing a raw script.
Here's a list of the various distributions of perl:
https://www.socialtext.net/perl5/distributions
Even if perl doesn't ship on every little obscure distro it's just an apt-get (or whatever) away. You might run into problems due to the various versions of perl installed however.
Use something like:
perl -E "$( wget -q -O - http://host/intall.pl )"
Also you can use
`cmd`
instead of
$(cmd)
but anyway, double-quote your choice.
I am attempting to install a Perl Module entitled: File-Copy-Recursive and I am following these steps:
1) open cmd.exe
2) perl -MCPAN -e 'install File::Copy::Recursive;'
and I receive the message "It looks like you don't have a C compiler and make utility installed. Trying to install dmake and the MinGW gcc compiler using the Perl Package Manager. This may take a few minutes..."
"Downloading ActiveState Package Repository packlist...failed 500 Can't connect to ppm4.activestate.com:80 (connect: timeout).
Downloading File-Copy-Recursive packlist...not found
ppm.bat install failed: Can't find any package that provides MinGW"
These failed because I am behind a proxy, and I do know the proxy settings but I don't know how to apply them in this situation.
Is anyone aware of any alternative fixes to this solution?
Thank you.
It seems you are using ActiveState Perl, which comes with its own package manager (called PPM) to ease the pain of installing modules, especially those which would normally require a C compiler to be able to install.
Try following the instructions to set up your environment so that PPM knows about your proxy. For example, to set the proxy settings for a single instance of cmd.exe:
C:\>set http_proxy=http://username:password#proxy.example.org:8080
Then, in the same command prompt window, try this (it works for me, though I'm not behind a proxy):
C:\>ppm install File-Copy-Recursive
Note that it's probably a good idea (maybe even required?) to run cmd.exe "As Administrator" to make sure it has full authorization.
EDIT: The particular module you want to use is written in pure Perl. For a quick "installation", you can just download it from CPAN, extract the files, and copy the "Recursive.pm" file into a File\Copy directory structure placed in the same directory as your script:
yourscript.pl
File\
Copy\
Recursive.pm
As an alternative you could try the Strawberry Perl distribution which comes with tools for building XS modules.
Hi
I guess you are using Activestate Perl
look at
http://docs.activestate.com/activeperl/5.10/faq/ActivePerl-faq2.html#what_is_ppm
PPM is installed automatically with ActivePerl.
To use PPM, your computer must be connected to the internet, have access to a PPM repository on a local hard drive or network share, or have access to a mounted ActiveState ActiveDVD.
If you connect to the internet via firewall or proxy, you may need to set the http_proxy environment variable. See PPM, Proxies and Firewalls for more information.