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File::Copy dying on Win2k when target file already there

by scain (Curate)
on Jan 16, 2003 at 17:49 UTC ( [id://227431]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

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

Hello Fine Monks,

In an effort to make my webapp install cross-platform, I have written several small Perl scripts that do some of the moving of files for 'make install'. These scripts work fine when installing on a Linux box, and they work when installing on a Win2k box, as long as the files that it is trying to install don't already exist in the install location. If the files are alread there, the script dies thusly:

conf\plugins\BatchDumper.pm unable to copy to C:\progra~1\apache~1\apa +che\conf\gbrowse.conf\plugins\BatchDumper.pm : Bad file descriptor NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'C:\WINNT\system32\cmd.exe' : return code ' +0x9' Stop.
Now, I suppose I could check for the existence of the file, unlink it and then copy it, but that seems quite ugly to me, when File::Copy's copy should work just fine. Any suggestions? The code follows:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; #Perform installation of gbrowse apache configuration files use File::Copy; use Bio::Root::IO; # get configuration stuff from command line my $dir = $ARGV[0]; # use Bio::Root::IO now #my $delim = '/'; #if ($Config{'osname'} =~ /win/i && $Config{'osname'} !~ /darwin/i ) { # $dir =~ s!\/!\\!g; # $delim = '\\'; #} #start the installation... print "Installing sample configuration files...\n"; if (! (-e $dir)) { mkdir($dir,0777) or die "unable to make $dir directory\n"; } opendir CONFDIR, "conf" or die "unable to opendir conf\n"; while (my $conffile = readdir(CONFDIR) ) { my $localfile = Bio::Root::IO->catfile('conf', $conffile); if (-f $localfile) { my $installfile = Bio::Root::IO->catfile($dir, $conffile); if (-f $installfile) { print " Found $conffile in $dir. Skipping...\n"; } else { copy($localfile, $installfile) or die "unable to copy to $installfile\n"; } } } closedir CONFDIR; my $plugindir = Bio::Root::IO->catfile($dir, "plugins"); if (! (-e $plugindir)) { mkdir($plugindir,0777) or die "unable to mkdir $plugindir\n"; } opendir PLUGINS, "conf/plugins" or die "unable to opendir ./conf/plugi +ns\n"; while (my $pluginfile = readdir(PLUGINS) ) { my $localfile = Bio::Root::IO->catfile('conf/plugins',$pluginfile) +; if (-f $localfile) { my $installfile = Bio::Root::IO->catfile($plugindir, $pluginfi +le); copy($localfile, $installfile) or die "unable to copy to $installfile\n"; } } closedir PLUGINS; my $langdir = Bio::Root::IO->catfile($dir, 'languages'); if (! (-e $langdir)) { mkdir($langdir,0777) or die "unable to mkdir $langdir\n"; } opendir LANGS, "conf/languages" or die "unable to opendir ./conf/langu +ages\n"; while (my $langfile = readdir(LANGS)) { my $localfile = Bio::Root::IO->catfile("conf/languages", $langfile +); if (-f $localfile) { my $installfile = Bio::Root::IO->catfile($langdir, $langfile); copy($localfile, $installfile) or die "unable to copy to $installfile\n"; } } closedir LANGS;

Thanks,
Scott
Project coordinator of the Generic Model Organism Database Project

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: File::Copy dying on Win2k when target file already there
by bart (Canon) on Jan 16, 2003 at 20:12 UTC
    Actually, it's your own script, not File::Copy, that causes the script to die:
    copy($localfile, $installfile) or die "unable to copy to $installfile\n";
    If you were to drop the "or die..." part, it wouldn't do that. It wouldn't replace the file that was there, either, so it's not the best of solutions.

    $installfile looks like it contains an absolute path to me. You may try to delete a file without checking if it did indeed exist, like this:

    unlink $installfile;
    No error checking here: if it fails, nothing happens. If you were to put this line just in front of the line containing the copy(), including the die() part, this would likely do the proper thing: replace an existing file, and die() if it fails.
Re: File::Copy dying on Win2k when target file already there
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Jan 16, 2003 at 21:03 UTC
    Very strange. Your code is die "unable to copy to $installfile\n"; so where is it getting the " : invalid file descriptor" before the \n?

    You might print $! and $^E also to find out why the copy failed.

    One time when I had an "already there" problem, it's because the file was read-only. So you can't just delete it either. I unconditionally reset the attribute on the target, ignoring any error if it didn't exist, then did the copy.

    —John

      Very sorry about the confusion. I had a little bit of a versioning problem. I modified the error message line after I pasted in the code for the script to get a more informative error message, and forgot to fix the code. The modified line looks like this:
      copy($localfile, $installfile) or die "$localfile unable to copy to $installfile : $!\n";

      That said, demerphq helped me track down the problem. The problematic files where read-only, and apparently File::Copy won't let you copy over read-only files (even if you are the Administrator). I modified the code to add lines like this:

      fixreadonly($plugindir) if $^O =~ /win32/i; sub fixreadonly { my $dir = shift; my $unsetreadonly = Bio::Root::IO->catfile( $dir, "*.*"); system("attrib -r /s $unsetreadonly"); }

      Scott
      Project coordinator of the Generic Model Organism Database Project

        You can change the attribute using chmod, built into Perl, instead of calling out to system. I tried it using the UNIX bits meanings, and it did indeed turn off the R flag on Windows NT.

        That works the same on both platforms, so you don't even have to make it conditional.

Re: File::Copy dying on Win2k when target file already there
by runrig (Abbot) on Jan 16, 2003 at 20:56 UTC
    You really ought to include $! or $^E in your die error messages...that being said, I don't see how your error message relates to your code; what is BatchDumper.pm, and where is it called in your code?
      Agreed about $!; I added in between posting the code and posting the error message.

      BatchDumper.pm is part of the app and it has to be installed in a subdirectory of Apache\conf. The error message comes from the fact that the script that does the copying for the install dies because BatchDumper.pm is read-only.

      Scott
      Project coordinator of the Generic Model Organism Database Project

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