Sat, 27 May 2006
I noticed recently that my SVN::Web pages had stopped working. Today I found a little time to investigate. My apache error log said:
Can't locate object method "caught" via package "SVN::Web::X" at /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.7/SVN/Web.pm
Nice.
I remembered having a bit of hassle installing it first time around primarily because it wasn't ready for Apache2, so I punched "SVN::Web Apache2" into Google, and surprised myself when I noticed that my notes page was the second hit. It was top on MSN.
Aha! So that's the reason I write these notes!
My notes told me which modules I could let debian install and which I had to manage myself. They also told me the hacks I had made to make things work with Apache2.
So in these situations I normally make sure I'm running the latest versions of everything. The bug I'm chasing might already be fixed. The first thing I noticed was that there was a new version of SVN::Web iteslf. So I installed it.
Since I had first installed SVN::Web debian had upgraded from Perl 5.8.7 to 5.8.8, so the latest SVN::Web installed into a slightly different directory. During the installation it told me that Exception::Class was out of date and asked if it should be updated. I declined since currently Exception::Class was installed as a debian package and I was hoping it could stay that way. (In fact, I had also installed it from CPAN, but didn't read enough of my notes to notice that.)
After installing the latest SVN::Web, I tried running it, just to see what happened. I was expecting loads of errors since my hacky patches were now lost. In fact, I got exactly the same error as before. Good News! That seemed to show that SVN::Web now works with Apache2, and my hacks were no longer required.
But the original problem remained. So I installed the latest Exception::Class, which hadn't yet made it into debian, tried again and everything just worked.
Wonderful!
Now, if only there was a debian package of SVN::Web so that someone else could worry about all this.
So once again I battled SVN::Web and debian and I prevailed! And once again you can see the results at svnweb.
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Wed, 01 Feb 2006
Recovering SVN bdb Repositories
I looked at a few of my older SVK repositories and found that debian had upgraded bdb under me and so the repositories couldn't be read. The error message was something like:
Berkeley DB error: Berkeley DB error for filesystem /home/pjcj/g/svk/testr/db while opening environment: DB_VERSION_MISMATCH: Database environment version mismatch: bdb: Program version 4.3 doesn't match environment version
The solution was to find a copy of svnadmin which was statically linked to the older library and use that to help upgrade the repository. While I was there, I moved the remainder of my repositories to fsfs.
I found such an svnadmin binary at uncc.org after which the sequence of commands is:
$ /path/to/static/svnadmin recover repository $ /path/to/static/svnadmin dump repository > repository.dmp
At this point you could upgrade your bdb repository if you wanted to. I just blew it away and created a new fsfs repository. (Well, I was a little more careful.)
$ mv repository repository.bdb $ svnadmin create repository $ svnadmin load repository < repository.dmp
And then everything worked again.
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Here's how I set up my base utilities on a new machine. It's not optimal by a long shot, but it's pretty easy.
% aptitude install svk $ cd ~ $ svk depot --init $ svk cp http://svk.server/svn/base $ rm -r base $ cd g $ svk co //base/trunk base $ cd .. $ ln -s g/base/* g/base/.* .
[/revision_control] permanent link
It's really about time I made my SVK repositories public, and as a first step towards that I decided to install SVN::Web. I'm running debian, and since the Perl SVN bindings are such a pain to install I am using the system perl to run SVK. This means that I also need to use the system perl to run SVN::Web.
The first thing I did was to install debian's mod_perl. That wasn't too hard:
# aptitude install libapache2-mod-perl2
and everything still seemed to work. Now the problem is that SVN::Web isn't packaged for debian, so the installation is going to need to be an unholy mix of debian packages and CPAN modules. I decided to try to install as many of the debian packages as I could and install the remainder from CPAN. So, the debian packages I installed were:
# aptitude install libtemplate-perl libpod-coverage-perl \
libtest-differences-perl libmodule-build-perl libtext-diff-perl \
libxml-rss-perl libexception-class-perl libtemplate-perl-doc \
libapache2-request-perl libnumber-format-perl \
libtemplate-plugin-clickable-perl libemail-find-perl
They might not all be strictly necessary.
Then I needed to install some modules from CPAN:
# perl -MCPAN -e shell cpan> install SVN::Web ... cpan> install Exception::Class ... cpan> install Devel::StackTrace ... cpan> install Template::Plugin::Number::Format ... cpan> install Text::Diff::HTML ... cpan> install Template::Plugin::Clickable::Email ...
I had to install Exception::Class from CPAN since the debian version was too old. Without Text::Diff::HTML the process would just sit there eating all the CPU when you asked for HTML diffs. Without Template::Plugin::Clickable::Email the error log filled up saying it wasn't there.
Then I added to /etc/apache2/sites-available/default :
<Directory /var/www/svnweb>
AllowOverride None
Options None
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler SVN::Web
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/svnweb/css>
SetHandler default-handler
</Directory>
Then I had to hack on SVN::Web.pm itself to make it work with Apache2. The diff below seems to work for me, though it might well be either overkill or underkill.
--- /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.7/SVN/Web.pm.org 2006-01-30 20:37:46.000000000 +0100
+++ /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.7/SVN/Web.pm 2006-01-30 22:50:42.000000000 +0100
@@ -861,15 +861,17 @@
sub handler {
eval "
- use Apache::RequestRec ();
- use Apache::RequestUtil ();
- use Apache::RequestIO ();
- use Apache::Response ();
- use Apache::Const;
- use Apache::Constants;
- use Apache::Request;
+ use Apache2::RequestRec ();
+ use Apache2::RequestUtil ();
+ use Apache2::RequestIO ();
+ use Apache2::Response ();
+ use Apache2::Const;
+ use Apache2::Const;
+ use Apache2::Request;
";
+ die $@ if $@;
+
my $r = shift;
eval "$r = Apache::Request->new($r)";
my $base = $r->location;
@@ -921,7 +923,7 @@
}
mod_perl_output($cfg, $html);
- return &Apache::OK;
+ return &Apache2::Const::OK;
}
=head1 SEE ALSO
So I battled SVN::Web and debian and I prevailed! You can see the results at svnweb.
