[BlueOnyx:09251] Re: Add CPAN modules via yum

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Rod,

> I need to add a couple pretty common CPAN modules (CGI,
> CGI:Session, DBI). When attempting to add using 'yum install
> perl-CGI', I get no "No package perl-CGI available". I'm guessing I
> need a new/different repository. However, I know better than to add
> repositories without checking with this list. Has anyone successfully
> installed these modules?

A lot of CPAN Perl modules are available in the standard YUM 
repositories that the OS ties into. Sometimes the naming is slightly 
different. A "yum search" with just the bare metal name or some features 
might dig those up. Like "yum search CGI".

On 5107R and 5108R CGI is available as "perl-CGI". On 5106R you won't 
find it in the standard CentOS5 repositories, though. I think it's in 
EPEL instead. If you get it from Epel, be very, very sure to just yum 
install the selected RPM(s) and to then remove the repository again. 
Because a "yum update" with active EPEL YUM repository will most likely 
kill your BlueOnyx.

There are a couple of other ways to install Perl modules from CPAN and 
most of them require that you have some developement tools installed. 
Such as as make, automake, the gcc compiler and some devel libraries for 
various stuff.

You could use the Perl CPAN shell: "perl -mcpan ..." (don't remember 
the full syntax offhand, but you could google it).

Or you could use "cpan2rpm", which I often use. It's a command line 
tool that fetches the respective module from CPAN and builds RPMs of it. 
It has some quirks and oddities, but mostly works fine.

Or you could try to find pre-built RPMs for RHEL5/CentOS5 (for 5106R) 
or RHEL6/CentOS6/SL6 if you run a 5107R or 5108R. In that case also make 
sure to use 32-bit RPMs for 5107R and 64-bit RPMs for 5108R. Thre are 
various search engines for RPMs. One that I remember offhand is 
rpmfind.net, but I'm not at my home PC to look up the other ones that I 
usually use. The usual precautions when using pre-built RPMs from 
untrusted sources should apply, though.

Regards,

Michael