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PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS VERY OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS

Perl

Perl has become a language of choice for World Wide Web development, text processing, Internet services, mail filtering, systems administration, and most every other task requiring a portable and easily developed solution. Your Virtual Server has both the Perl4 and Perl5 interpreters already installed. 

Perl4
#!/usr/bin/perl

Perl5
#!/usr/local/bin/perl

If you require the use of the Perl5 Standard Libraries or other Perl5 modules, you will need to install these into a local directory on your Virtual Server.

Installing the Perl5 Standard Libraries

Connect to your Virtual Server via Telnet or SSH and run the following commands that match your Virtual Server O/S.

NOTE: If your Virtual Server is running the FreeBSD O/S you should already have the Perl5 Standard Libraries installed at ~/usr/local/lib/perl5. If not, or if you wish to re-install them, follow the directions below.

The Perl5 Standard Libraries for FreeBSD do not count toward your Virtual Server disk space quota. The libraries for BSD/OS require approximately 11 MB of disk space.

If your Virtual Server was ordered after Nov 22, 1999, you are likely running FreeBSD. To find out which O/S your Virtual Server is running, use the uname command: 

% uname

If your Virtual Server is not already running FreeBSD, Upgrade to a New FreeBSD Virtual Server today! 

FreeBSD
% vinstall perl5


BSD/OS
% cd
% tar xvf /usr/local/contrib/perl5.tar

Removing the Perl5 Standard Libraries

If you would like to remove the Perl5 Standard Libraries you may do so by running the following commands that match your Virtual Server O/S. 

FreeBSD
% vrmperl


BSD/OS
% rm -rf ~/usr/local/lib/perl5

Installing Perl5 Modules

We have created an easy way for you to install a group of commonly requested Perl5 modules on your Virtual Server. This group of modules include: 

CPAN
CGI
LWP
DBI
DBD::mysql
DBD::mSQL
DBD::Pg
Pg
MIME::Base64

To install all of these modules, do the following: 

FreeBSD
% vinstall perlpac1

If you require a module that is not included in the Perl5 Standard Libraries or the perlpac1 distribution, you may be able use the vcpan utility to install it. The vcpan utility is a wrapper around the perl5 -MCPAN -e shell command that automates module download and installation. To launch vcpan into interactive mode, do the following. 

FreeBSD
% vcpan

NOTE: If you receive an "out of memory" error while running vcpan, you may temporarily extend your memory limits by invoking the unlimit command (also available on certain shells as ulimit): 

% unlimit
% vcpan

To access the vcpan online help, do this: 

FreeBSD
% vcpan -h

Do the following to install the perldoc utility, which you can use to view Perl5 module documentation, on your Virtual Server. 

FreeBSD
% vinstall perldoc

This command links in a variety of required terminal macro definitions as well as a bunch of groff/troff/nroff files required for proper man page formatting.

Once installed, you may run the following command to access documentation for your favorite Perl5 module. Substitute your favorite Perl5 module name for Module::Favorite below. 

% virtual perldoc Module::Favorite

For more information and instructions about Perl5 module installation and CPAN see:

PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS