[BlueOnyx:02039] Re: Perl conflicts in upgrade attempt

[Chuck Tetlow]

You're right Michael.  That is a fairly stock BX system.  And I was simply attempting to perform a "yum upgrade".  Perl is the only package that will not upgrade.

But this system does have the Nuonce MailScanner/Spamassassin/MailWatch installed on it.  I had no idea that it so brutally installed packages when it was installed - its worked OK from day one.  But now, the Perl upgrade problem. 

Do you think that Perl not upgrading will cause any future problems?  I've got a second system that is identical, except has been loaded more recently (just two/three weeks ago).  It doesn't have the Perl upgrade problem (but may have already had the newer Perl version on it when MailScanner was installed).

Chuck

---------- Original Message -----------
From: Michael Stauber <mstauber at blueonyx.it> 
To: BlueOnyx General Mailing List <blueonyx at blueonyx.it> 
Sent: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:41:26 +0200 
Subject: [BlueOnyx:02037] Re: Perl conflicts in upgrade attempt

> Hi Chuck, 
> 
> > I've run into a problem updating one of our BX servers.  Perl and its 
> > dependancies won't upgrade.   
> 
> Quick question from my end: When you mean "Perl doesn't upgrade" ... do you 
> mean you want to do a "yum update" against the BlueOnyx and CentOS 
> repositories and Perl fails to update? 
> 
> Or do you mean that you want to install a Perl from a third party, or one you 
> build yourself? 
> 
> In general I would advise against upgrading Perl on BlueOnyx with anything but 
> a CentOS supplied Perl. It's fine to upgrade some Perl modules from CPAN (or 
> through third party RPMs), but ripping out Perl itself and shoving in a Perl 
> that wasn't specifically compiled for CentOS5 in "the RedHat way" may cause 
> issues all over the place. 
> 
> It starts with such small things as man pages which the third party perl may 
> store in different places than the CentOS Perl. Or it could be that your third 
> party Perl contains manpages which - on CentOS - are already aboard as they 
> were supplied by another RPM. 
> 
> Next there are the things that may appear to be less obvious. When you replace 
> the onboard Perl with one that's radically newer, then future YUM updates of 
> course still update the RPM supplied Perl modules. That may be fine, or it may 
> not, as those are "expecting" to find the CentOS Perl and may not "play 
> nicely" with your updated custom Perl. That is especially true for the 
> BlueOnyx GUI interface, which also heavily relies on Perl based handlers and 
> constructors and bring their own Perl module aboard which contains those 
> aspects. 
> 
> Personally and professionally I do a lot of things with Perl and in my 
> opionion there are not enough things wrong with the CentOS5 Perl that would 
> warrant an upgrade to the latest available Perl. Or any newer Perl than the 
> one aboard on CentOS5. Most of the cripes I have with it can be settled by 
> small work arounds or by upgrading some Perl modules to the latest versions. 
> 
> At the worst and if you really need your custom Perl, you could leave the 
> onboard Perl alone and compile a custom one with a modified prefix, so that it 
> installs somewhere else. Like /usr/local instead of /usr. Then simply execute 
> your Perl scripts which need the new Perl with the custom Perl and everything 
> else that's fine with the onboard Perl can still use that one instead. 
> 
> > Most of it appears to be conflict with the package 
> > perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker-6.30-1.noarch. Does anyone recognize that package 
> > name, or know what its used for? 
> 
> http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/3628185/com/perl-ExtUtils- 
> MakeMaker-6.30-1.noarch.rpm.html 
> 
> That RPM is not present on a stock BlueOnyx and it's not available in the 
> CentOS Yum repository either. But I seem to remember that MailScanner installs 
> usually forced it aboard with a brutal --force --nodeps. Both let my hairs 
> stand on end (MailScanner and what it does to my beloved Perl. :o). 
> 
> Are you by chance trying to install MailScanner? 
> 
> -- 
> With best regards 
> 
> Michael Stauber 
> 
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------- End of Original Message -------
 
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