Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Installing mod_perl — The Simple Way

We assume, to begin with, that you are running on some sort of Unix machine, you have downloaded the Apache sources, built Apache, and that now you are going to add mod_perl.

The first thing to do is to get the mod_perl sources. Go to http://apache.org. In the list of links to the left of the screen you should see “mod_perl”: select it. This takes you to http://perl.apache.org, the home page of the Apache/Perl Integration Project.

The first step is to select “Download,” which then offers you a number of ways of getting to the executables. The simplest is to download from http://perl.apache.org/dist (linked as this site), but there are many alternatives. When we did it, the gzipped tar on offer was mod_perl-1.24.tar.gz — no doubt the numbers will have moved on by the time this is in print. This gives you about 600 KB of file that you get onto your Unix machine as best you can.

It is worth saving it in a directory near your Apache, because this slightly simplifies the business of building and installing it later on. We keep all this stuff in /usr/src/mod_perl, near where the Apache sources were already stored. We created a directory for mod_perl, moved the downloaded file into it, unzipped it with gunzip <filename>, and extracted the files with tar xvf <filename> so we have: /usr/src/apache/mod_perl/mod_perl-1.24, and not very far away: /usr/src/apache/apache_1.3.26.

Go into /usr/src/apache/mod_perl/mod_perl-1.24, and read INSTALL. The simple ...