Installation of mod_perl-enabled Apache Without Superuser Privileges Page 6

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  % perl Makefile.PL   PREFIX=/home/stas   APACHE_PREFIX=/home/stas/apache   APACHE_SRC=../apache_x.x.x/src   DO_HTTPD=1   USE_APACI=1   EVERYTHING=1
  % make && make test && make install 
  % cd ../apache_x.x.x
  % make install

If you need some parameters to be passed to the .configure script, as we saw in the previous section use APACI_ARGS. For example:

  APACI_ARGS='--sbindir=/home/stas/apache/sbin,     --sysconfdir=/home/stas/apache/etc,     --localstatedir=/home/stas/apache/var,     --runtimedir=/home/stas/apache/var/run,     --logfiledir=/home/stas/apache/var/logs,     --proxycachedir=/home/stas/apache/var/proxy'

Note that the above multiline splitting will work only with bash, tcsh users will have to list all the parameters on a single line.

Basically the installation is complete. The only remaining problem is the @INC variable. This won't be correctly set if you rely on the PERL5LIB environment variable unless you set it explicitly in a startup file which is require'd before loading any other module that resides in your local repository. A much nicer approach is to use the lib pragma as we saw before, but in a slightly different way--we use it in the startup file and it affects all the code that will be executed under mod_perl handlers. For example:

  PerlRequire /home/stas/apache/perl/startup.pl

where startup.pl starts with:

  use lib qw(/home/stas/lib/perl5/5.00503/
             /home/stas/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005);

Note that you can still use the hard-coded @INC modifications in the scripts themselves, but be aware that scripts modify @INC in BEGIN blocks and mod_perl executes the BEGIN blocks only when it performs script compilation. As a result, @INC will be reset to its original value after the scripts are compiled and the hard-coded settings will be forgotten.

The only place you can alter the "original" value is during the server configuration stage either in the startup file or by putting :

  PerlSetEnv Perl5LIB   /home/stas/lib/perl5/5.00503/:/home/stas/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005




 in httpd.conf, but the latter setting will be ignored if you
use the PerlTaintcheck setting, and I hope you do use it. 


 The rest of the mod_perl configuration and use is just the same as if you
were installing mod_perl as superuser. 
Local mod_perl Enabled Apache
Installation with CPAN.pm


 Assuming that you have configured CPAN.pm to install Perl
modules locally as explained earlier in this article, the installation is very
simple. Start the CPAN.pm shell, set the arguments to be passed to
perl Makefile.PL (modify the example setting to suit your needs),
and tell CPAN.pm to do the rest for you: 
  % perl -MCPAN -eshell
  cpan> o conf makepl_arg 'DO_HTTPD=1 USE_APACI=1 EVERYTHING=1         PREFIX=/home/stas APACHE_PREFIX=/home/stas/apache'
  cpan> install mod_perl




 When you use CPAN.pm for local installations, after the
mod_perl installation is complete you must make sure that the value of
makepl_arg is restored to its original value.