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

Hi Monks,
Background: We've been running perl5.8.0 on our server for years and have been happily using Image::Magick. We installed perl5.8.8 a short while ago to /usr/local/bin/perl, so we can still use 5.8.0 at /usr/bin/perl and not have to update all of our perl scripts.
Problem: I tried using Image::Magick with 5.8.8 and I was told it wasn't installed. "Duh," I said to myself, and started up CPAN. I tried installing Image::Magick, but CPAN told me Image::Magick was up to date. "WTF? No it isn't! It isn't even installed for 5.8.8!" So I did something I probably shouldn't have done:

force install Image::Magick

It appeared to install with no problems. Yay! However, there are major problems. If I just put this one line in a perl5.8.8 script:

use Image::Magick;

Then my server blows up. It completely runs out of memory and the CPU works at 100%. Has anyone run into this before, or does anyone know how to fix it? If nothing else, I'd like to uninstall Image::Magick from 5.8.8.

Thanks!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Image::Magick Crashing Server
by zentara (Cardinal) on Feb 08, 2008 at 19:04 UTC
    <2 cents>

    To be honest, if I saw that problem, I would first test the old perl version 

    #!/usr/bin/perl
use Image::Magick;

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    if that works, but #!/usr/local/bin/perl causes the crash, you probably built the 2 Perl's differently(like one has threads?). The easiest fix, would be to do a fresh install of Image::Magick using /usr/local/bin/perl; I believe it will search /usr/local/lib first, before /usr/lib for the module. Do a manual install, those rpm installs are probably confusing you. Like are you sure which Perl the rpm installer is using?

    If that dosn't work, you may have a different problem, but are jumping to a false conclusion that it is ImageMagick or Perl5.8.8.

    </2cents>

    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum
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      Well I downloaded the latest and greatest ImageMagick source from their site and tried installing it. It make'd fine, but then when I ran a make test it failed 16/18 composite tests. I've been working on this stupid thing all day. I think I'm just going to use GD. By the way, use Image::Magick; does still work for /usr/bin/perl. Thanks for the idea.
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Re: Image::Magick Crashing Server (@INC sharing)
by tye (Sage) on Feb 09, 2008 at 07:31 UTC

    Sounds to me like your two versions of Perl have at least some directories in common between their @INC members. You can actually get away with that, but it requires really knowing what you are doing and choosing some non-default configuration options when you build the Perls that will share some of their directories. Disk has gotten much cheaper since the idea of sharing @INC directories between different installs of Perl was first considered. You are better off just making sure that each Perl has completely separate places to look for its modules.

    So the best idea might be to un-install one of your versions of Perl and then re-install that version but built such that it won't have any @INC directories in common with the other version.

    - tye        

[reply]
      I'm afraid to reply to this since my last reply has a reputation of -1. =)

      I checked @INC for /usr/bin/perl and /usr/local/bin/perl, and they aren't sharing anything.

      In regards to the composite test failures I'm getting, I want to clarify that the tests are for PerlMagick, not ImageMagick. I'm not sure if that makes any difference to anyone reading this.

      I Googled for the composite test failures that I was getting, but I couldn't find anyone who is having the same problem. I'm thinking that might be because PerlMagick's make install command doesn't do the tests by default, so you could just do: 
      perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

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      And not receive any errors. Maybe the majority of people just do that without testing? I'm not sure. I read somewhere that the composite functions use PNG libraries -- I don't have or need the PNG libraries, so I thought I'd give make install a shot. It installed fine and now use Image::Magick; is working with perl5.8.0 (/usr/bin/perl) and perl 5.8.8 (/usr/local/bin/perl).

      Thank you all for your help!
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