dyer85 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi everyone, I just joined today!

I have been meaning to come here for a while, but I have had my hands full for quite some time.

As the title implies, my problem has become quite severe. My situation is as follows:

Originally, I installed Apache 1.3.31 (Win32) alone. I then tried installing the Perl 5.8.4 binary from activestate.com. Even after setting Apache to use the registry to interpret scripts (script alias was correct, too), It would not work. I even associated (or tried) the .pl and .cgi extensions with the path to perl.exe, but I kept getting the 500 Internal server error (error log says that it can't spawn child process). Just now, I tried to uninstall this with Add/Remove programs, but the app froze and I had to Ctl+Alt+Delete it (isn't Windoze fun). Now I can't even delete the C:\Perl directory, I'm denied access.
Would you believe I actually had the Perl 5.6.1 binary working once upon a time? It was true, until I tried to use a newer CGI.pm. I started getting errors with the new CGI.pm. It was trying to use a Util.pm module, which was incorrect according to the errors shown when running a script from the command line. I thought replacing that with Perl 5.8.4 would make everything nice again. Quite the opposite; I've never been worse off!

I've searched everywhere (got experience with searching for windoze help before installing my first Perl binary), but no one really has much documentation for running Perl on Win32. I need to figure out how to get Perl working again. I really want to avoid installing apache fresh, for fear that something goes wrong with that. I am able to use PHP 5.0.0, which was the easiest thing that I've ever got to run since using my Apache. My roots are in Perl though. Thtat was my first server-side language and I don't want to abandon it!!

Sorry, almost forgot, I am running on Windows XP: Home

Please help me when you can, I'm desparate!

Curtis Dyer

Please visit My site, which is in progress! :-)
  • Comment on A very severe Perl installation problem!!

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Re: A very severe Perl installation problem!!
by tachyon (Chancellor) on Oct 12, 2004 at 06:55 UTC

    To delete your Perl reboot in safe mode and the lock should be gone. The most reliable way on XP is as follows: From the Start menu's Run dialog, enter the command MSConfig. Click on the BOOT.INI tab and check the /SAFEBOOT box. Now when you boot, Windows will go into Safe mode. Naturally, when you no longer need Safe mode, you'll repeat the process and uncheck that box. One caveat: Don't experiment with the other settings on this tab. You could wind up unable to get back into MSConfig to undo your changes.

    This works even if you have a USB keyboard that is dead due to lack of a driver when you boot. OK so in safe mode uninstall Perl. Unistall Apache as well. Uncheck the safe mode box and reboot.

    Read and follow the steps in this tutorial

    cheers

    tachyon

[reply]

      Thank you for your help tachyon!

      I don't know why I didn't come here sooner! I just wanted to let you know that I didn't have to end up booting up in safe mode. For some reason, when I Ctl+Alt+Deleted the Add/Remove programs app for Perl, it was still in a state of "installation," according to the error. This was why I couldn't delete the Perl directory directly. So, when I just booted up normally today, the deleting process went okay.

      I plan to download one of the Apache Mod_perl combos, so I don't have to go through as much grief. My only problem is, I already have PHP 5.0.0 working on my current Apache server, and I need to find an Apache + Mod_Perl package w/o PHP. Does anyone know of any good links for such a package. The reason why is that those packages with Apache, Mod_Perl, and PHP, have a PHP 4 version.

      Thank you again for your help,

      $curtis = "Take care";
print $curtis;

      [download]

      My site in progress
[reply]
[d/l]

        Have a look at WAMP which has Apache, Mysql and PHP5 by default and plugins for Perl or maybe Big Apache which has everything you want but uses PHP4 not 5. It should be trivial to change it from using 4 -> 5 simply edit these lines in your httpd.conf (in Apache /etc dir I expect) and restart apache. 

        #ScriptAlias /php4/ "C:/php4win/"
ScriptAlias /php5/ "C:/php5win/"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php3
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php4
#Action application/x-httpd-php "/php4/php.exe"
Action application/x-httpd-php "/php5/php.exe"

        [download]

        cheers

        tachyon

[reply]
[d/l]

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