in reply to Debian Lenny Out of Memory errors.

So what's your memory limit? does cpan -i CPAN die immediately, or only after a while? How much memory does it actually use? (use top to find out).

That said, it's usually a bad idea to try to update a module like CPAN that's installed via Debian's package manager (in this case it's even a core module...). If you absolutely need a newer version of a core module, you might be better off with installing a separate perl in /usr/local/.

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Re^2: Debian Lenny Out of Memory errors.
by kc0dxf (Initiate) on Jan 14, 2009 at 23:32 UTC
    No doesn't die immediately. And it will throw out of memory regardless of the module I try to load. For example, doing cpan -i Lchown and I get this: 
    CPAN: Storable loaded ok (v2.18)
Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok (v2.008)
............................................................................DONE
Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz
  Database was generated on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:26:54 GMT
CPAN: HTTP::Date loaded ok (v5.810)
..............
  New CPAN.pm version (v1.9301) available.
  Currently running version is v1.9205
  You might want to try
    install CPAN
    reload cpan
  to both upgrade CPAN.pm and run the new version without leaving
  the current session.

CPAN: Time::HiRes loaded ok (v1.9711)

..............................................................DONE
CPAN: LWP::UserAgent loaded ok (v5.813)

I would like to connect to one of the following sites to get 'modules/03modlist.data.gz':

 http://www.perl.org/CPAN/
 ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/

Is it OK to try to connect to the Internet? yes
Fetching with LWP:
  http://www.perl.org/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz
LWP failed with code500 messageCan't connect to www.perl.org:80 (connect: timeout)

Trying with "/usr/bin/wget -O /root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.tmp3185" to get
    http://www.perl.org/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz
--2009-01-14 17:30:22--  http://www.perl.org/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Resolving proxy.edm-inc.com... 10.10.1.1
Connecting to proxy.edm-inc.com|10.10.1.1|:3128... connected.
Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.cpan.org/modules/03modlist.data.gz following
--2009-01-14 17:30:27--  http://www.cpan.org/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Connecting to proxy.edm-inc.com|10.10.1.1|:3128... connected.
Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 156955 (153K) text/plain
Saving to: `/root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.tmp3185'

100%======================================================================> 156,955     --.-K/s   in 0.01s

2009-01-14 17:30:27 (13.2 MB/s) - `/root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.tmp3185' saved 156955/156955

Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Out of memory!
[reply]
      Would you care to answer my other questions as well?

      So far I only see that it needs more memory than it has, but without seeing any numbers, it might use an entirely reasonable amount of memory, and your limits are just too strict. (Note the ulimit's -d is not the only possible memory restriction).

      Try running it without a memory limit, and see how much it uses at most.

[reply]
[d/l]
        Ok, I tried setting ulimit to unlimited on the stack size and virtual mem as well as data and it appears to work. I guess perl 5.10 takes a lot more memory?
[reply]

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