Question

Hello and thank you all for the excellent TWiki! I love it!

Host: 1und1 (1and1 in Germany), Shared Hosting Server Infos: uname -a says: Linux infong33 2.6.16.33-20070131a-areca-filemon-3ware-e1000 i686 configure says: Linux 2.4.28-es (i386-linux) Perl 5.6.1 (as CGI)

I have a working installation of TWiki 4.1.2 Now I tried to install/upgrade to 4.2, and I had to do a modification to the Twiki standard distribution.

1. I tried to use the existing CPAN modules of the 4.1.2 installation also for the 4.2 installation, so I included these libraries in the INC path in LocalLib.cfg (@localPerlLibPath). The path was shown in configure script, but the order was different: 4.1.2 first lists the local libs and after that the Perl libs (usr/...), in 4.2 it is the other way round. This made TWiki to use the older (server) versions, instead of the new local ones. To make TWiki use the new libs, I tried to use the setlib.cfg of 4.1.2 and so far it seems to work without problems. My questions: Is it safe to do this? Are there other possible implications of this change?

2. TWiki 4.2. lists FileHandle 2.01 as additional system requirements. At 1und1 there is only FileHandle 2.00 available (configure). So I tried to install it with CPAN, but it showed dependencies on Perl5.10. To avoid problems in installing Perl5.10 on this shared host, i cancelled installation. It took me some time to find the right (?) FileHandle module, because there are some other FileHandle modules on CPAN.org, but finally found it at http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/htdocs/perl/FileHandle.pm.html and copied it to a file named FileHandle.pm and put it to TWiki/CPAN libs (twiki/lib/CPAN/lib). I attached FileHandle.pm to this topic. Now configure doesn't show any more errors. My question: Is this the right/best way to handle this?

With these extra changes 4.2. seems to work on my 1und1 shared hosting account, but up to now I didn't do extensive testing of this changes, especially regarding plugins.

Please tell me, if you need more info! Any helpful information is very much appreciated!

o.k., enough germlish

Thanks!

Environment

-- IngoBlickling - 25 Jan 2008

Answer

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1. It should be perfectly safe to use the 4.1.2 setlib.cfg
2. FileHandle is a standard module in perl, so as soon as you move to a modern perl this problem should go away. Pressure your ISP to upgrade perl. Your solution is fine, I think.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 26 Jan 2008

Thank you very much, Crawford! Just for information for other 1und1 customers and TWiki developers: I contacted 1und1 and was told, that they are already preparing an update of their entire shared hosting system and they expect the change to take place in february 2008, including Apache, Perl (probably 5.8.x), PHP. So hopefully, in a few weeks this isn't a problem any more! Thanks again!

-- IngoBlickling - 26 Jan 2008

They updated said servers (perl 5.8.8,..) some weeks ago and after recompiling cpan modules everything works fine now. Both setlib.cfgs work and filehandle now available.

-- IngoBlickling - 10 Apr 2008