README.solaris - Perl version 5 on Solaris systems
This document describes various features of Sun's Solaris operating system
that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just perl) is
compiled and/or runs. Some issues relating to the older SunOS 4.x are
also discussed, though they may be out of date.
For the most part, everything should just work.
Starting with Solaris 8, perl5.00503 (or higher) is supplied with the
operating system, so you might not even need to build a newer version
of perl at all. The Sun-supplied version is installed in /usr/perl5
with /usr/bin/perl pointing to /usr/perl5/bin/perl. Do not disturb
that installation unless you really know what you are doing. If you
remove the perl supplied with the OS, there is a good chance you will
render some bits of your system inoperable. If you wish to install a
newer version of perl, install it under a different prefix from
/usr/perl5. Common prefixes to use are /usr/local and /opt/perl.
You may wish to put your version of perl in the PATH of all users by
changing the link /usr/bin/perl. This is OK, as all Perl scripts
shipped with Solaris use /usr/perl5/bin/perl.
For consistency with common usage, perl's Configure script performs
some minor manipulations on the operating system name and version
number as reported by uname. Here's a partial translation table:
<![CDATA[
Sun: perl's Configure:
uname uname -r Name osname osvers
SunOS 4.1.3 Solaris 1.1 sunos 4.1.3
SunOS 5.6 Solaris 2.6 solaris 2.6
SunOS 5.8 Solaris 8 solaris 2.8
]]>
The complete table can be found in the Sun Managers' FAQ
L under
``9.1) Which Sun models run which versions of SunOS?''.
There are many, many sources for Solaris information. A few of the
important ones for perl:
-
Solaris FAQ
-
The Solaris FAQ is available at
L.
The Sun Managers' FAQ is available at
L
-
Precompiled Binaries
-
Precompiled binaries, links to many sites, and much, much more is
available at L.
-
Solaris Documentation
-
All Solaris documentation is available on-line at L.
.
Be sure to use a tar program compiled under Solaris (not SunOS 4.x)
to extract the perl-5.x.x.tar.gz file. Do not use GNU tar compiled
for SunOS4 on Solaris. (GNU tar compiled for Solaris should be fine.)
When you run SunOS4 binaries on Solaris, the run-time system magically
alters pathnames matching m#lib/locale# so that when tar tries to create
lib/locale.pm, a file named lib/oldlocale.pm gets created instead.
If you found this advice too late and used a SunOS4-compiled tar
anyway, you must find the incorrectly renamed file and move it back
to lib/locale.pm.
You must use an ANSI C compiler to build perl. Perl can be compiled
with either Sun's add-on C compiler or with gcc. The C compiler that
shipped with SunOS4 will not do.
See the INSTALL file for general information regarding Configure.
Only Solaris-specific issues are discussed here. Usually, the
defaults should be fine.
See the INSTALL file for general information regarding 64-bit compiles.
In general, the defaults should be fine for most people.
By default, perl-5.6.0 (or later) is compiled as a 32-bit application
with largefile and long-long support.
It is possible to build a threaded version of perl on Solaris. The entire
perl thread implementation is still experimental, however, so beware.
Perl uses the sched_yield(3RT) function. In versions of Solaris up
to 2.6, that function is in -lposix4. Starting with Solaris 7, it is
in -lrt. The hints file should handle adding this automatically.
Starting from Perl 5.7.1 Perl uses the Solaris malloc, since the perl
malloc breaks when dealing with more than 2GB of memory, and the Solaris
malloc also seems to be faster.
If you for some reason (such as binary backward compatibility) really
need to use perl's malloc, you can rebuild Perl from the sources
and Configure the build with
<![CDATA[
sh Configure -Dusemymalloc
]]>
You should not use perl's malloc if you are building with gcc. There
are reports of core dumps, especially in the PDL module. The problem
appears to go away under -DDEBUGGING, so it has been difficult to
track down. Sun's compiler appears to be okay with or without perl's
malloc. [XXX further investigation is needed here.]
-
Dynamic Loading Problems With GNU as and GNU ld
-
If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, see the section
``GNU as and GNU ld'' above.
-
ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
-
If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
``GNU as and GNU ld''.
-
dlopen: stub interception failed
-
The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib). See
``LD_LIBRARY_PATH'' above.
-
#error ``No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified''
-
This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
update your gcc installation.
-
sh: ar: not found
-
This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin/
directory.
.
op/stat.t test 4 may fail if you are on a tmpfs of some sort.
Building in /tmp sometimes shows this behavior. The
test suite detects if you are building in /tmp, but it may not be able
to catch all tmpfs situations.
See ``nss_delete core dump from op/pwent or op/grent''.
You can pick up prebuilt binaries for Solaris from
L, ActiveState L,
and L under the Binaries list at the top of the page.
There are probably other sources as well. Please note that these sites
are under the control of their respective owners, not the perl developers.
The stdio(3C) manpage notes that only 255 files may be opened using
fopen(), and only file descriptors 0 through 255 can be used in a
stream. Since perl calls
open()
and then fdopen(3C) with the
resulting file descriptor, perl is limited to 255 simultaneous open
files.
See the modules under the Solaris:: namespace on CPAN,
L.
Proc::ProcessTable does not compile on Solaris with perl5.6.0 and higher
if you have LARGEFILES defined. Since largefile support is the
default in 5.6.0 and later, you have to take special steps to use this
module.
The problem is that various structures visible via procfs use off_t,
and if you compile with largefile support these change from 32 bits to
64 bits. Thus what you get back from procfs doesn't match up with
the structures in perl, resulting in garbage. See proc(4) for further
discussion.
A fix for Proc::ProcessTable is to edit Makefile to
explicitly remove the largefile flags from the ones MakeMaker picks up
from Config.pm. This will result in Proc::ProcessTable being built
under the correct environment. Everything should then be OK as long as
Proc::ProcessTable doesn't try to share off_t's with the rest of perl,
or if it does they should be explicitly specified as off64_t.
BSD::Resource versions earlier than 1.09 do not compile on Solaris
with perl 5.6.0 and higher, for the same reasons as Proc::ProcessTable.
BSD::Resource versions starting from 1.09 have a workaround for the problem.
Net::SSLeay requires a /dev/urandom to be present. This device is not
part of Solaris. You can either get the package SUNWski (packaged with
several Sun software products, for example the Sun WebServer, which is
part of the Solaris Server Intranet Extension, or the Sun Directory
Services, part of Solaris for ISPs) or download the ANDIrand package
from L. If you use SUNWski, make a
symbolic link /dev/urandom pointing to /dev/random.
It may be possible to use the Entropy Gathering Daemon (written in
Perl!), available from L.
The original was written by Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu
drawing heavily on advice from Alan Burlison, Nick Ing-Simmons, Tim Bunce,
and many other Solaris users over the years.
Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to perlbug@perl.org.
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