Installing Perl & Apache on Solaris 10

One of the first things you will want to setup on your new Solaris/OpenSolaris operating system is a web server, even though Solaris now comes with Perl and Apache installed by default, it is still worth installing your own version. New versions of Perl and Apache will always be ahead of the Solaris version, plus you will never damage the pre-installed version.

The procedure has been test on:

• Solaris 10 3/05 SPARC & X86
• Fully Patched
• Installed Solaris Software Companion (/opt/sfw)

The following steps will install:

• perl 5.8.7
• basic perl modules used by apache
• Apache 1.3.34 (Version 1 is still widely used)

Step 1) Setup environment vaiables (Using csh):

# setenv PATH \
    /usr/sfw/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
# setenv PATH \
    ${PATH}:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/sbin:/opt/sfw/bin:.
# setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH \
    /usr/sfw/lib:/usr/local/lib:/opt/sfw/lib

Step 2) Configure and install perl (Install location will be /usr/local/perl587)

# gtar xfz perl-5.8.7.tar.gz
# cd perl-5.8.7
# rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
# sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/' \
    -Dprefix=/usr/local/perl587 -des
# make
# make test
# make install
# cd ..
# cp /usr/local/perl587/bin/perl /usr/local/bin

Step 3) Check perl has been install and is in your path.

# rehash
# which perl
/usr/local/bin/perl
# perl -V
Summary of my perl5 (revision 5 version 8 subversion 7) configuration:
Platform:
osname=solaris, osvers=2.10, archname=sun4-solaris
... a lot more stuff....

Step 4) Install some basic perl modules (down load from: http://search.cpan.org/)

# gtar xfz HTML-Tagset-3.04.tar.gz
# cd HTML-Tagset-3.04
# perl Makefile.PL
# make
# make test
# make install
# cd ..

# gtar xfz HTML-Parser-3.46.tar.gz
# cd HTML-Parser-3.46
# perl Makefile.PL
# make
# make test
# make install
# cd ..

# gtar xfz URI-1.35.tar.gz
# cd URI-1.35
# perl Makefile.PL
# make
# make test
# make install
# cd ..

# gtar xfz Compress-Zlib-1.41.tar.gz
# cd Compress-Zlib-1.41
# perl Makefile.PL
# make
# make test
# make install
# cd ..

# gtar xfz libwww-perl-5.803.tar.gz
# cd libwww-perl-5.803
# perl Makefile.PL -n
# make
# make test
# make install
# cd ..

Step 5) Set up mod_perl (Need to extract apache files first, since it updates them):

# gtar xfz apache_1.3.34.tar.gz
# gtar xfz mod_perl-1.29.tar.gz
# cd mod_perl-1.29
# perl Makefile.PL \
    APACHE_SRC=../apache_1.3.34/src \
    DO_HTTPD=1 USE_APACI=1 \
    PREP_HTTPD=1 EVERYTHING=1
# make
# make install

Step 6) Previous step did not compile apache. I prefer it that way:

# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Apache/1334 \
    --enable-module=info \
    --enable-module=most --enable-shared=max \
    --enable-module=status \
    --enable-module=so \
    --activate-module=src/modules/perl/libperl.a

# make
# make install

Step 7) We will pause here, since if you try to start the apache server you will get an error if this is on a SPARC platform.

# /usr/local/Apache/1334/bin/apachectl start

Syntax error on line 210 of /usr/local/Apache/1334/conf/httpd.conf:
Cannot load /usr/local/Apache/1334/libexec/mod_negotiation.so into server: ld.so.1: httpd: fatal: relocation error: file /usr/local/Apache/1334/libexec/mod_negotiation.so: symbol __floatdisf: referenced symbol not found
/usr/local/Apache/1334/bin/apachectl start: httpd could not be started

Step 8) SKIP to "step 9" if you are on a x86 platform.

# cd src/modules/proxy
# ld -G -o mod_proxy.so mod_proxy.lo \
    `gcc -print-libgcc-file-name`
# cd ../standard
# ld -G -o mod_negotiation.so mod_negotiation.lo \
    `gcc -print-libgcc-file-name`
# cd ../../..
# make
# make install

Step 9) Test that it all works

# /usr/local/Apache/1334/bin/apachectl start
http://localhost:8080

You will need to read other documention about configurations changes you can make to apache, but now you have a working version to use.

Hope it will helped some people and if there are any errors or commenst please be in contact.

Installing StarOffice 8 on a Solaris NFS client (workstation)

As you are all away StarOffice 8 is now out it looks good, but you may find out that integrating the software into GNOME/CDE on a Solaris/OpenSolaris workstation after install the software on a NFS server. If you are happy to install the whole (400MB+) on every workstation then you don't have to worry about this problem.

With StarOffice 7 you could install the software once on your network and then run the simple command on all workstations "/usr/dt/bin/dtappintegrate -s /opt/staroffice7" which would integrate it with your windows system. This feature was replace in the new version with packages, which seems a better idea, but it does not work 100%, since it needs a bit of manual work.

The procedure you will require is:

1) Install StarOffice 8 on your NFS server. (Keep the unpacked files, usually located in /var/tmp/unpack_staroffice/packages)

2) On your workstation mount the software filesystem i.e.

# mount server:/opt/staroffice8 /opt/staroffice8
# mount server:/opt/adabas /opt/adabas

3) Install the following packages if they don't already exists on your system (location can be found from step 1): Solaris 10 already has then installed so you can skip this.

SUNWj5cfg JDK 5.0 Host Config. (1.5.0_03)
SUNWfreetype2 FreeType2 Font library
SUNWj5rt JDK 5.0 Runtime Env. (1.5.0_03)

4) Install the following packages:

SUNWstaroffice-desktop-integratn Desktop integration for StarOffice 8
SUNWstaroffice-shared-mime-info shared mime info updates for StarOffice 8

5) Next step is a manual process to merge the contents of /etc/mailcap and /etc/mime.types on the client with the ones on the server. This was automaticly done on the server installation, since the package "SUNWstaroffice-desktop-int-root" did it. But this can not be installed on a client: [I just copied it from the server]

/etc/mailcap
/etc/mime.types

6) Finally, add a link:
cd /etc
ln -s /opt/staroffice8 staroffice8

I have talked to Sun about this problem and I belive they are going to look into it. I guess they did not bother about this setup thinking that we would install all the software on all workstation,
which I guess what the PC people are going to do, but UNIX people don't do this!

Hope this helps others.

My First Blog

This is nothing to read here, but give me time and I am sure there will be more.