What I would like to understand is why on two very similar machines ExtUtils::Liblist knows where to find the libs on one but not on the other. And Glib builds fine on one but not on the other.

Really?

UTSL :)

Same version of liblist? Same ENV vars (like LIB... and what not)?

Do you have any idea on how to attack this systematically?

I linked to it, but here you go

each process comes with cwd/%ENV/@ARGV/STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR ... so compare all paths, all %ENV, all pkg-config/ldconfig ... permissions, etc

What I'm trying to figure is what element of that would cause the script to fail in cron on one server but not the other. My feeling is that it's the database client.

The error message is supposed to tell you that :)

No error message? Adjust cron error reporting, check your mail, ...

Still no error message? Increase verbosity (maybe use Carp::Always; or twiddle some logging levels or $DEBUG++/$VERBOSE++, whatever you're using

Still no error message? Maybe redirect errors to a logfile ?

Once you have an error message, you can check the usual (everything, sanity check), $PATH/$LD_LIBRARY_PATH..., chroot jail,selinux, permissions and password typos, shebang ... its a checklist, error message usually tells you what to check

Like the deep links from Re: Cron revisited/Re^2: Perl Module Not Working In Crontab explain, and here they are:

• Perl/UNIX .profile problem
• Unix Aliases?
• Perl Script Not Working With Crontab
• Twig in a crontab?
• Running Perl program w/root privs via cron
• system call in crontab
• Perl & cron job environmental variables
• HowTo: Add Jobs To cron Under Linux or UNIX?
• Unix FAQ - Cron
• Unix FAQ - Cron
  Cron jobs do not inherit the login environment of the user
  Cron jobs do not have a stdin associated with them
  ...
• Cron Frequently Asked Questions
• Cron Job FAQ
• Basic Linux Operations FAQ
• Automating Tasks with Cron and Crontab files
• 4.4. Scheduling processes
   
• system command is not working
• I have some problem with Crontab
• perl file doesn't execute
• script fails loading module version, but > version is installed
• CGI Help Guide , Troubleshooting Perl CGI scripts
   
• Csh Programming Considered Harmful
   
• How do I set env. Variables from Perl with shell script
• Get default login environment
• Set shell environment variables from within a perl script
• How to change a script's environment after the script is already run, based on shell sourcing ?
• Perl: Source shell script to for environment variables?
• Reading and setting the environment from a shell script for the calling program
• Importing environment variables from shell script file to Perl
• sourcing a shell script/.profile and importing into %ENV
• setting perl ENV from file
• Changing parent process environment variable
   
• Re^3: DBD::mysql fail install check (DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH ldd otool install_name_tool VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT .bundle/.dylib/.so
   
• Making a system command work via a scheduled task.
• How to troubleshoot scheduled tasks in Windows XP and in Windows Server 2003
• Re^6: pp and multiple perl scripts
• Basic debugging checklist , brian's Guide to Solving Any Perl Problem

morgon wrote:

Do you have any idea on how to attack this systematically?

Well, no. I think that your conclusions about the malfunction are incomplete. You could visit this newer node and see if that does not provide some insight.

I've just built Glib.pm on MS Whyyndwoes, a tougher platform in general when it comes to getting such things right; I did so in order to test the build procedures used by Glib.pm. The insights gained from doing this are written up in the node mentioned above.