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Perl Installation and Configuration

Use this procedure to download, install, and configure Perl for use with the Management Console on UNIX and Linux.

This section includes instructions for you to perform the following steps:

Download Perl

To obtain the Perl source code:
  1. Download the Perl source code to the intended Build Forge host. Do the following as a non-root user.
    • Make a temporary working directory.
    • Go to http://www.perl.com/
    • Download the version marked Stable Production Release
    For example, at this writing the file name is as follows:
    stable.tar.gz
    
  2. Extract the image.
    $ gunzip -c stable.tar.gz | tar xvf -
    
    Note that tar is set to use stdin for the pipe (using the - parameter)
  3. Go to the newly created working directory. At this writing the stable production release was 5.8.8.
    $ cd perl-5.8.8
    

Install Perl

  1. Configure Perl for installation in the working directory you just created. Note the capital C in Configure.
    $ ./Configure -Dprefix=/usr/local/perl-5.8.8 -Dusethreads -Duseithreads \
                  -ds -e
    This step specifies the following:
    • -Dprefix=perl-5.8.8: directory where Perl will be installed. It is installed in /usr/local by default. The example shows how to put it in /usr/local/perl-5.8.8.
    • -Dusethreads: required. Build Forge will fail to start with an undefined symbol error if this is not set.
    • -Duseithreads: required. Build Forge will fail to start with an undefined symbol error if this is not set.
    • -ds: required to run silently (without prompting–there are hundreds of prompts)
    • -e: required to run silently
  2. Compile Perl.
    $ make
    
    This step compiles executables in your local directory.
  3. Install Perl. Do the installation as the root user.
    # make install
    
    This step must be performed as a user who has write privileges for the directory where Perl is installed. The directory is /usr/local/perl-5.8.8 in this example. It is normally done as root. Your local administrative setup may vary.

Perl Setting for Oracle 9

This step is needed only for a Management Console using an Oracle 9.x database and the DBD::Oracle driver.
Set ora_ph_type.

The ora_ph_type parameter in <bf-install>/db.ini must be set to a value that does not cause the driver to strip trailing blanks. The setting ora_ph_type=96 is recommended. If set to a value that strips trailing blanks (for example, SQL_VARCHAR), you see an error when running Build Forge: DBD::Oracle::st execute failed: ORA-01400: cannot insert NULL into ("BLDFORGE"."BF_RESULT"."BF_ENV") The problem does not occur with Oracle 10.