Question

I have set up Active Perl (build 628) on three machines running Win32. On one machine (W2K pro) the testenv script executes without any problem. On the two others (NT4, W2K server), I systematically get the following error : "The getpwuid function is unimplemented at d:\twiki\testenv line 41."

After some research in ActiveState doc, it seems that some system functions used in the testenv script, such as getpwuid, are not implemented on Win32 platforms.

So why do they execute well on the first Win32 machine ?

How can I have them execute as well on the two others ?

• TWiki version: dec 2000
• Web server: Apache 1.3
• Server OS: WinNT4 and W2K

-- JeromeBouvattier - 19 Aug 2001

Answer

Well, found it. On the first computer, perl.exe reffered to cygwin/bin/perl.exe and not activeperl/bin/perl.exe. It seems that getpwuid is implemented in the cygwin port. It returns the current user's name.

This leads me to the following questions. Should I work with the Cygwin Perl or with ActiveState Perl and comment out getpwuid and other group functions in testenv for testing purpose ? What difference between the two ports could affect Twiki's usage ?

-- JeromeBouvattier - 19 Aug 2001

This is a good question. Should we be recommending ActiveState Perl or Cygwin Perl? If it is to be ActiveState then the getpwuid function should not be used on Windows Platforms.

I hacked out the line in testenv.pl

my $usr = getpwuid( $< );

replacing it with

my $usr = ""; 

Also took out:

    $grp = getgrgid( $_ );

replaced with

    $grp = ""; 

Just so the rest of the script would work.

-- MartinCleaver - 26 Sep 2001

Like Martin I've disabled these parts of testenv. Maybe testenv should be a bit modified to cope with the not working of these functions, and some of the documentation...

I wouldn't know wether to recommend ActiveState or CygWin perl to be used, only because ActiveState doesn't support the functions only used in testenv.

-- HansDonner - 26 Sep 2001

There's a fixed version of testenv over at CookbookActivePerlTestenv, which also provides more info on your Perl version and environment.

I have got both ActiveState and Cygwin Perl working OK with testenv and the rest of TWiki - I prefer Cygwin because the setup's a little easier and there's no need to patch testenv. See WindowsInstallCookbook for the full story.

-- RichardDonkin - 24 Feb 2002