Practical mod_perl

Chapter 23. Getting Help and Online Resources

In this chapter, we propose a way to solve your mod_perl-related problems and provide starting points for information resources related to mod_perl.

If you have any problem with mod_perl itself, be it a build problem or a runtime problem, you should follow the steps below. But before you follow them, think carefully about whether the problem you are experiencing is mod_perl-related. It’s quite possible that the problem is in the Perl code, SQL code, Apache itself, or something else entirely. In such cases, you should refer to other resources presented later in this chapter. Remember that although mod_perl resources might help you with many related things, they will never be as detailed as resources devoted to the topic at hand.

If you still think that the problem has something to do with mod_perl, these are the steps to follow:

1. Try to tackle the problem by yourself for a while. Check that you have the right permissions, that there is enough disk space, etc. Do sanity checks: try to remove the mod_perl source tree, unpack it again, and build from fresh.

   When trying to figure out what the problem is, always run under single-server mode (httpd -X) and always check the error_log file.

   If you still have problems, proceed to step 2.

2. Reread the documentation (or if you didn’t read it yet, do it now). Try to follow the build and usage steps as explained there. This book, Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C (O’Reilly), and the documentation distributed ...