[Dxspider-support] RE: [Dxspider-announce] ANNOUNCE: 1.50

[charlie carroll]

Well, since Dirk used my call and name, he must think I know something. 
It's late, so we'll see what I know and if I can confuse everyone!

First, the best news.  I had told Dirk that the installations of the
most recent versions of DXSpider on Microsoft platforms would run
without Digest::SHA1 being installed.  I know that on a Linux platform
cluster.pl will not run without Digest::SHA1 being there.  It seemed
this was not the case on a Windows platform.  However, tonight I was
trying to verify installation procedures that I'll explain in the next
section.  While searching through the c:\perl directory, I discovered
subdirectories labelled "Digest."  To make a long story short, and I
have confirmed this on 5 different nodes that I can access, the Digest
subdirectory and SHA1.pm are installed when the initial Perl package is
installed.  This may be why the newer versions of DXSpider would run
without Digest::SHA1 being installed.  It was already there from the
Perl installation!
I did a quick, but admittedly not thorough test, and simply deleted
SHA1.pm from the Perl directory.  Sure enough, DXSpider would not
start.  A re-install of SHA1.pm, and DXSpider ran.  
Go search your Perl directory and see if you don't already find SHA1.pm
in your C:\perl\site\lib\Digest directory.  It's in my on Perl 5.6.0
build 623 and 5.6.1 build 633 installations.  Problem solved.

Ok, now that that is out of the way, the following information may
simply be useless.  At least I'll write it up so that it may find its
way someday into Section 5.5 of the installation manual that I just
finished revising.

Dirk's previous e-mail cited 2 different URLs to obtain Digest::SHA1. 
The
first is:

http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Digest/Digest-SHA1-2.01.tar.gz

In my case, clicking on this link started the download of the "tag.gz"
file.  Once you have this file, unzip the contents into a suitable
directory.  I used my old C:\ppm directory.  Go to a "DOS" prompt and
change to whichever directory you unzipped the file into.  You will find
that unzipping the "tar.gz" file produced another subdirectory named
"Digest-SHA1-2.01.  Change to that directory.  At this point simply
enter "perl Makefile.PL" and everything will be installed.  Note here,
this command is case sensitive.

The second URL that Dirk referenced is:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Modules/Perl/dist_html?dist_id=10472

If you go to that page, you will have to hunt around a bit for the
correct download link.  It's on the right of the page and says "PPM
Packages Download."  Once there select the directory "5.6plus" which
brings you to:

http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus/

You can simply start here and avoid the earlier pages.  Scroll down the
list until you find "Digest-SHA1.ppd."  Download this file.

This file is really a script that downloads and installs the necessary
files for you.  Take a look at Section 5.5 of the Installation manual
which in part says:

"Note that where these files land will be directly related to where you
chose to install your ActivePerl (mine, as you can probably guess from
what follows, went into "D:\Perl"):- 

D:\ppm>ppm install Data-Dumper.ppd
Installing package 'Data-Dumper.ppd'
Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.bs
Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.dll
Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.exp
Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.lib
Installing D:\Perl\html\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.html
Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\Data\Dumper\Dumper.pm
Writing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.packlist
D:\ppm>"

Recognize the .ppd extension?  When you did your initial installation of
CPAN packages, you were running a ppd script file.  In the case of the
original CPAN packages, all the necessary files came as part of the
original zip file.

To run Digest-SHA1.ppd simply do what's shown above:

"ppm install Digest-SHA1.ppd"

Digest-SHA1.ppd is a download script that gets the necessary files from
the activestate.com site.  If you want proof, disconnect your internet
connection and try running this download script.  Eventually it will
time out and give an error message.

So, that's about it.  The best news is that getting and installing a new
Digest::SHA-1 appears not to be necessary.  However, if I have messed
this up terribly, then the good news is there are 2 different methods to
get and install Digest::SHA1.

73, Charlie, k1xx