[Dxspider-support] Perl problem?

[Saul]

Interesting discoveries with respect to Perl versions. The platform at the
K1RK node is a Windows ME box with ample disk and memory space. While
installing 5.8.8 bld 820 appears to work, at least in a cmd box, it (and
WinME) somehow interacts with Spider and causes the cluster to fail during
startup. It can't find users.V3 even though it's there and looks reasonable
in size (as do all the user_asc files). I regressed to Perl 5.6.1 bld 638
and had the same problem on the ME box. Just for kicks I took a spare
processor I had here that was running Win XP, installed Perl 5.8.8 on it
with a fresh tarball of spider, started it up and "orft it jolly did go."
Then, being a masochist, I transferred the complete Spider backup (a 1.54
bld 0.162) I had on the K1RK ME machine from the last time it ran under an
earlier version of Perl (don't remember version - it was 5. something or
other but not a 5.6.x, maybe a 5.5.X), and bingo - it started up just fine.
It even linked with K1XX who is normally my feed. So, something is rotten in
Perl Land between Windows ME, recent Perls, and DX Spider. What, who knows.
I may just bite the bullet and upgrade the K1RK machine to Win XP when I can
get over to the site because at the moment I can't find a Perl install older
than 5.6.X. 

There's also a problem with at least two of the Spider required PPM's for
5.8.8 There is no Data-Dumper but there are 3 - 5.8.X compatible versions of
it that evidently work with DX Spider. There is a Time-HiRes, but it says
it's a downgrade from what came with the 5.8.8 install. The version I found
was 1.49 and the version evidently already installed was 1.80. The 1.49
doesn't do anything drastic to it with DX Spider so I installed that. The
rest of them are available and found by the PPM GUI (DB_File, Net-Telnet,
and TimeDate). So unless somebody can tell me why Spider can't find user.V3
(and perl user_asc does not seem to create anything) with Perl 5.8.8, I
guess K1RK is down until I can get over to the remote site to install XP on
it.

Saul, K1BI

-----Original Message-----
From: dxspider-support-bounces at dxcluster.org
[mailto:dxspider-support-bounces at dxcluster.org] On Behalf Of Saul
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 1:30 PM
To: 'The DXSpider Support list'
Subject: Re: [Dxspider-support] Perl problem?

Thanks Dirk, version of DB_File is 1.815, not sure what constitutes sanity,
but running perl user_asc doesn't produce any error messages (or any
response for that matter), just a processing delay followed by the OS
prompt. Deleted users.V3 ran perl user_asc in data folder and nothing was
created.
Saul, K1BI

-----Original Message-----
From: dxspider-support-bounces at dxcluster.org
[mailto:dxspider-support-bounces at dxcluster.org] On Behalf Of Dirk Koopman
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 11:06 AM
To: The DXSpider Support list
Subject: Re: [Dxspider-support] Perl problem?

Saul wrote:
> Not sure why I decided to take the plunge and attempt a Perl update 
> all
the
> way to 5.8.8, bld 820, but I did. Once I found the equivalent ppm 
> modules
to
> the original ones used in early 5.6.X versions, it seemed to run OK. 
> At least I wasn't getting any Perl errors while trying to start the
cluster.
> However, the cluster won't start. Previously after upgrading to DX 
> Spider
> 1.54 bld 0.172 it was running fine with Perl 5.6.1. Now I get the
following
> in the log on startup after upgrading to 5.8.8:
> 
> 1193062593^cluster
> 1193062593^DXSpider V1.54, build 0.172 started 1193062593^Copyright 
> (c) 1998-2007 Dirk Koopman G1TLH 1193062593^loading prefixes ...
> 1193062593^US Database not loaded
> 1193062594^loading band data ...
> 1193062594^loading user file system ...
> 1193062594^can't open user file: /spider/data/users (No such file or
> directory) [rebuild it from user_asc?] at /spider/perl/DXUser.pm line 
> 145
> 
> I saw some previous posts where Dirk suggested problems with user_asc
and/or
> the various versions of user_asc. I do have a users.V3 that looks like
it's
> about the right size. In fact all of my user_asc versions seem to be 
> reasonable in size. I tried running perl user_asc but that didn't help.
Not
> sure why it's not finding users.V3 unless there's supposed to be a
"users."
> file there, but certainly prior contents of data don't show any 
> evidence
of
> that so I presume it's looking for users.V3. Running perl user_asc, 
> incidentally, doesn't seem to create any new file anywhere unless perl 
> doesn't bother changing the dates on the file.
> 

Remove the users.v3 file. Check that it has gone. Try perl user_asc again.
Verify that a new users.v3 is created. Also, just check with ppm that
DB_File is sane (and there).

Dirk

_______________________________________________
Dxspider-support mailing list
Dxspider-support at dxcluster.org
http://mailman.tobit.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dxspider-support


_______________________________________________
Dxspider-support mailing list
Dxspider-support at dxcluster.org
http://mailman.tobit.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dxspider-support