How to upgrade Perl to version 5.6.1 on your Cobalt Raq3i computer
I needed to upgrade to version 5.6.1 and I spent some time on the cobalt user mailing lists looking for anyone else who had accomplished this. All I found were tales of woe and a lot of grumbing because Cobalt hasn't released an upgrade.
So, I took matters into my own hands and upgraded perl myself. This was not very difficult. The only thing you have to really worry about is pointing your new perl installation at the Cobalt::xxxx libraries so that your administration pages continue to work.
I have made some assumptions with this tutorial. If any of them are wrong, STOP NOW:
- You can telnet to your server and you are comfortable moving around in a linux environment.
- You can (and know how to) su to root. You must be signed on as root to perform this installation.
- You understand the risks involved in this. If you get to a point and are unsure how to proceed, for God's sake, email me or dig into the reference information before proceeding any farther. It is better to take the extra time upfront to learn the process than to spend 3 or 4 hours trying to troubleshoot something that went wrong.
Before you do ANYTHING, you should get a record of what your current installation looks like. This will save you a lot of heartache and problems if any of the following steps blows up. To get a picture of your current installation, type perl -V at a telnet prompt and print out the results.
Here are the three main processes for upgrading Perl.
1) Download the source files from CPAN. You should be getting version 5.6.1, which at the time of this writing is the Stable release. If the version has moved beyond 5.6.1, the rest of this information is probably useless and you should stop right here.
FTP the stable.tar.gz file to your server. Be sure to place this file in a directory all by itself. Decompress this file
gunzip stable.tar.gz
tar -xvf stable.tar
cd perl-5.6.1
2) Configure Perl to install. This is where I have done the heavy lifting for you. Download this file to your PC: config.sh.
Open it in notepad and follow the instructions at the top of the script. This is where you put your own server's information so that Perl installs correctly.
Once you have completed the required edits, upload this file to the directory where perl was unpacked to. (/perl-5.6.1/) There are a lot of .SH files that we need to update with the information located in our uploaded config.sh file. To do this, type:
sh Configure -S
This should put a bunch of variable substitutions on the other configuration files. If there are any warnings about permissions, make sure you are signed in as 'root'. If any of the variable substitutions fail, for any reason, do not proceed until you can correct the problem.
3) Now Perl knows where it is supposed to install itself and is configured correctly. To complete the installation type each of the following (remember, you must be root!)
make depend
make
make test
make install
That's it. When you reboot your server, you should be running the new perl-5.6.1 on your Cobalt Raq3i computer. Type perl -V at a telnet prompt to make sure that your perl installation says 5.6.1 and that everything looks kosher.
I did all of this on August the 2nd, 2001.
Special note: If the version has moved beyond 5.6.1, and you feel froggy, you can attempt the installation of Perl on your own. Just remember that to keep your administration scripts from breaking, perl must know where the special Cobalt libraries are located. During the configuration questions, perl asks if there are any libraries that should be included, be SURE to mention the location of those Cobalt libraries. /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/ (I think)
