Hi there,
The subject line you gave this was a very good idea, so I've tried
to throw in some of my experiences in the hope that this will be a
useful document for those who stumble along after me. Take heart,
weary traveller! There is light at the end of the tunnel (if you
look in the right direction:).
On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, Ask Bjoern Hansen wrote:
> "Why questions go unanswered".
> http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/Questions.html
Thanks for the pointer, I'll grab it and do what you said.
> It was an awful long mail to go through.
Sorry. Do you think that was why I didn't get any replies? I
thought I'd done what it said I should do in the documentation. :(
> You also forgot to send us the Makefile.PL parameters you used.
Apparently I left a bit out, so it should have been even longer. :(
> You could also have done a better job at marking out what of the 33kb you
> sent was important or relevant.
Nobody said that to me before. I had no idea what was important or
relevant, or I would have done just that! As I said in the mail, it
was my first attempt at mod_perl, and I tried my best to do what it
said in the SUPPORT document. When you're new to it all, and you've
just unpacked 8,705 source files into a directory tree, knowing what
is important and what is not does not happen quickly. The prospects
of finding a single error in a reasonable time, alone, look bleak.
If you ask people who know me personally they will tell you that I am
a very self-sufficient type. I like to do things for people but to ask
for help goes against the grain with me. I probably need more practice.
> Apache::src seems to not work when you have your mod_perl tree in a
> subdirectory to your apache tree. How you got it to compile is mysterious
> to me though, you must have been doing something funky. When I try that
> it both screams and yells at me that it can't find the apache src.
I didn't think I knew enough about this stuff to do anything ``funky''!
I thought maybe it shouldn't have compiled, as well. The day before
yesterday I finally threw out everything (including the machine) and
started again with a different box. To my further and great irritation
it worked first time. As it happens, this time I put the mod_perl and
Apache directories at the same level in the tree. After it had worked,
I thought this might have been the problem but I have no evidence. It
does suggest a structure like that in the Eagle Book but it says ``you
might want to follow the suggestions given here for convenience'' so I
didn't follow them the first time because I was comfortable with using
directory structures and it wasn't convenient to do it that way.
I think that maybe some people have inadvertently produced build scripts
or code which depend upon the directory layout (or environment) to work,
yet they neither check nor enforce it. I seem to have tripped over that.
I think that I'm sticking my neck out a little by saying this, but my
ego isn't as delicate as some, so go ahead and shout at me. As I said,
I have no evidence so it's only a guess. As long as everything gets
better in the end it doesn't matter if I'm criticized. [Para. A]
There are several other things that seemed to me to be not quite right.
I made notes in my `lab book' as I went along, and I'll be glad to list
my thoughts about them if anybody is interested. See Para. A above.
> PS. Flaming people who try to help you have never done any good.
It had reached the stage where I was spending time I could not afford,
getting nowhere, slowly, so I asked for help. I was disappointed by
the zero response I got but even more disappointed with the non-zero
response that some others were getting.
I skipper a yacht. Out at sea, we say ``ask silly questions''. If
you're 100 miles from land, and somebody was afraid to ask a question
because it might be a silly one, everbody might die. For that reason
we are patient with questions that to the more experienced of us seem
to have obvious answers.
I see people asking easy questions, still do, which even I can answer.
I answer them, but usually they are not really mod_perl topics so I
send private mail. The thing that shocked me was that often in the
thank-you replies I get, people mention that they have had sarcastic
comments from others on the list telling them not to ask non-mod-perl
questions, and things like that. I was angry with those people who
are so clever that they can afford to make disparaging remarks about
others when it would be a lot easier just to answer the question in
a private message. For example, one person wanted to know how to
unsubscribe, so I told him. He said that lots of people had told him
to RTFM and junk like that. He knew what to do, he'd just lost the
exact wording for unsubscribing. Another asked something about Perl
(for his friend, not for himself) and he said that he was very sorry
he'd ever posted his question because he'd had almost nothing but a
heap of replies about `perl -w' and `use strict'. I gave his friend
a book which he said he could not find in Russia. The friend turned
out to be Professor of the Astronomical Institute, Moscow University
so you should be careful when you tell anyone to Read The Manual.
After getting absolutely zero response to my questions, I thought
that if I raised the stakes a little, I might get somewhere. As a
result of my message to Mr. Baker I am now in touch with a lot of
people where previously I was not getting through. It worked, but
on the way some people were hurt and I'm sorry for that. Perhaps
it was selfish of me. I don't think I'm selfish most of the time.
I apologized all round.
> Nobody wants to work for or with someone who is rude.
I will agree that I made my points forcefully, but I did not think
that I was being rude. If others see it that way I will take that
on board. But if you want to see rude, you should see some of the
stuff I got in reply. I saw all kinds of abuse and threats. Five
people asked for money to solve my problem - what happened to all
this stuff about open source, helping your fellow man? I like to
make a contribution, and I pay my own way. My employees will all
tell you that I pay them out of my own pocket and I pay well. But
I tried to use the mod_perl list in exactly the way it says it's
supposed to be used, and not only did it fail me (which I can cope
with, and I don't blame anybody for that), but I saw it fail others
in a much more disagreeable way which I cannot leave unchallenged.
> Try with freshly unpacked tar files, and don't put the mod_perl under the
> apache-1.3 directory. What does it say then?
It looks like this may be the reason for my problem. I have to say
that if I have a criticism of Unix-like systems in general it is that
they tend to have very messy directory structures. I suppose it will
take someone a lot brighter than I am to improve upon that. I also
think that people are too ready to fork new processes, because it is
so easy. But that's all getting way off topic.
How did it compile? Don't know. I tried a lot of things on the way
to getting it to compile. I found that I collected a large suite of
perl modules because some of them seemed to require others that I did
not have. Still I do not know what I need and what I don't, but it's
early days for me. I only wanted Apache::Registry. The Book said I
should get LWP and CGI.pm because ``your life will be easier'', so
that's what I did.
Maybe that was my undoing.
Kind regards,
and thanks again for your help and useful advice,
Ged Haywood.
PS: If anybody feels the need through frustration and overwork to
flame somebody, I volunteer to be the recipient. If you make them
imaginative, I will put them into a collection and publish them in
a book. Maybe it will sell lots of copies. :)
