el-moe has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hey all,

We just got a Sun Blade running Solaris 8 and I'm having a hell of a time getting stuff to work. Every other box in our entire plant is running HP-UX 10.x.

I've got so many errors I don't even know where to start. CPAN is acting wierd and I can't get any modules to install.

I guess I'm just feeling frustrated and wanted to know if anyone has a word of encouragement or advice. I haven't had to install gcc in about 3 years ( or code any C for that matter ) and that install's not going well either.

Ok -- end of rant --

Prost,
Moe

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(jptxs)Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by jptxs (Curate) on Mar 30, 2001 at 07:44 UTC
    You may already be doing this, but if you're not you'll thank me =) man pkgadd and the surf on over to Sun Freeware, where you'll find wonderfully easy to install pkg's of gcc, perl560, etc. Hope that helps... 
    "A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the
seriousness one had as a child, at play."   --Nietzsche

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      Oh my GOD!!!

      You are a saint!!!

      Thank you thank you thank you!!!

      I don't know how to repay you but I will try...

      Prost,
      Moe

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Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by TrinityInfinity (Scribe) on Mar 30, 2001 at 03:42 UTC
    I wish I knew more about installation issues w/Solaris 8 so I could offer words of advice.. but since I don't, I'll just offer encouragement. I've been working w/Solaris 8 at work, and everything is peachy keen so far, modules and all... so I know it can be done! Good luck, keep plugging away... "Eventually, the solution presents itself!" - Dr. Jones Sr., Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
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      So there is hope after all? What a relief!

      Thanks for the encouragement!

      Prost,
      Moe

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Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by yakko (Friar) on Mar 30, 2001 at 08:56 UTC
    Things like yer gcc can be had by installing the Software COmpanion. This CD has a huggy-feely GUI install, and will put your freeware under /opt/sfw ... of course, as mentioned in this thread, sites like Sunfreeware have more packages that generally install in /usr/local

    The problem I see you having is that modules that use XS will harf when being built because it's expecting Sun's compiler. I had to tweak my Config.pm (/usr/perl5/5.00503/i866pc-solaris/Config.pm in my case) to get gcc to be the compiler, get "-fPIC" to be the way we build position-independent code, etc... after that, modules needing XS seemed to compile properly.

    Update: I should note that I'm assuming you're using the perl that comes with Solaris 8. If you install any other version, YMMV here.

    --
    Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.

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      You have hit it right on the mark! I'll take a look at the Companion CD right now. Thank you very very much!!!

      Prost,
      Moe

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(OT)Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by jynx (Priest) on Mar 31, 2001 at 03:39 UTC

    Yeah, gcc is giving us our own share of problems as well. However, after much work (and a couple of e-mails from a friend inside Sun) we found out that there's a patch that seems to be somewhat messing up the gcc install. The patch is included in Sun 8 and recent patching on Sun 7 can induce similar problems. So getting the most recent patches is a must (there should be some for March 2001; they're good).

    Also, when you run the configure, you have to do some explicit things. Mainly, do not have gnu binutils installed or linked into the gcc directory. Make sure flex and bison are installed or linked into the gcc directory. Then you flag no gnu-ld or gnu-as. In the end the command we ran looked like:

    # ../gcc-obj/configure --prefix=/some/dir --without-gnu-ld --without-g
+nu-as

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    After that it's simply a matter of running the subsequent make's (bootstrap, check, install). We used the Sun Workshop Compilers and gnu make if that makes a difference.

    i realize this is completely off topic, but the research is probably useful to more than just our machines...

    HTH,
    jynx

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Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by spitzie (Initiate) on Aug 02, 2001 at 20:42 UTC
    Hi Moe, I'm in the same boat you were, so maybe you have come across this. We have just got some Sun Blades running Solaris 8 and I need to run a simple bit of perl on them. But for some reason the pipes aren't working as they should. The code forks itself into 2 tasks, the parent task checks the disk for new files then passes the filename on to the child to be processed. The problem is if the parent passes more than one filename, then the child only processes the first name. The pipes, $_, print, etc are all set up as in the Camel book. And to really annoy me, I can put the same code on one of our AIX4 boxes and it runs fine. Have you found anything about solaris 8 & perl, that might help me Thanks Paul
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Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by c-era (Curate) on Mar 30, 2001 at 18:19 UTC
    One problem many people have are using the gcc lib instead of the lib sun provides. Solaris has a few differences then most other Unixs. If you read the install instructions from solaris they tell you how to use the libs sun provides instead of the gcc libs.
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      I was under the impression that the gcc libs were the shibby-dibby. Am I wrong?

      I will read the docs and see what I can do to use the sun libs.

      Thanks a lot for the advice!

      Prost,
      Moe

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Re: Is anyone using Solaris 8?
by el-moe (Scribe) on Mar 31, 2001 at 00:06 UTC
    ALL:

    Thank you for all the help!!!!!!!

    I feel like I'm at least going down the correct path now.

    Drinks are on me.

    Prost,
    Moe

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