http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=1199282


in reply to Difficult compiling newer Perl on Solaris and DBD::Oracle with odd behavior

I sympathize, having worked my day job mainly on a Solaris/Oracle system for many years. First some comments:

With respect , this isn't really your problem.

From what you describe:

This reeks or management/business decision issues, which the company (not you specifically) should address. It's clear to anyone reading this that you have good intentions, the company should support and enable you to fix their problems, either by giving you the access you need, or at least having someone properly support these production systems.

Each version of Oracle ships with it's own version of perl, hidden in the train wreck of the application install that is Oracle, are you confusing the system perl with this, or are you getting confused by the number of different builds/DBD::Oracle builds?

My first recommendation would be to install your own modern perl somewhere on the system, and once you're happy you have all the options right. Our stack was somewhat similar, except that I setup a modern build environment, as what ships with Solaris is so old.

"Is there anyway I can figure out based on the previous Perl install?"

You likely know that perl -V will provide compile time information.

My suggestion is that you take a step back and start from scratch. Read INSTALL and README.solaris (patch inbound, some of those links are long dead), as well as the DBD::Oracle documentation and hints.

If you still have troubles post a concrete example of what you tried, how it failed and details of your setup (compiler etc).

  • Comment on Re: Difficult compiling newer Perl on Solaris and DBD::Oracle with odd behavior
  • Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Difficult compiling newer Perl on Solaris and DBD::Oracle with odd behavior
by sirhalos (Sexton) on Sep 14, 2017 at 12:35 UTC

    I just wanted to thank you. I was able to get this to work using your suggestion. Hopefully this will help this department and keep them in business; tomorrow is my last day before I move on. Thank you so very much.

[reply]

      You're welcome, I'm glad this worked out. Good luck with your move.

[reply]
Re^2: Difficult compiling newer Perl on Solaris and DBD::Oracle with odd behavior
by sirhalos (Sexton) on Sep 13, 2017 at 11:35 UTC

    The Perl that was in the #!shebang line was a Perl they installed back in around 2004 located in /usr/local/perl5, so not the one that comes with Oracle.

    We do have a department directory, which I have what we call 'admin' permissions on, so I can do anything I want in that directory and in that directory alone, hence why I can compile Perl in that directory.

    Yes, I know it is a management problem, the company is over 100 years old, new management is only thinking about the front end, and making new and exciting stuff to sell to customers. They don't realize the whole company runs on old stuff that needs replaced too (content gathering, selection, ingestion). Face lifts don't fix the backend.

[reply]

      "We do have a department directory, which I have what we call 'admin' permissions on, so I can do anything I want in that directory and in that directory alone, hence why I can compile Perl in that directory"

      We have a similar setup, this is where I built everything from the ground up, avoiding any Sun/Oracle stupidity. With some effort it all works, DBD::Oracle now running against Oracle 12c, various other versions before that.

      "Face lifts don't fix the backend."

      This is the real difficult problem which someone (perhaps not you) should address with urgency.

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom