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perlsolaris (1)

Name

perlsolaris - Perl version 5 on Solaris systems

Synopsis

Please see following description for synopsis

Description




Perl Programmers Reference Guide                   PERLSOLARIS(1)



NAME
     README.solaris - Perl version 5 on Solaris systems

DESCRIPTION
     This document describes various features of Sun's Solaris
     operating system that will affect how Perl version 5
     (hereafter just perl) is compiled and/or runs.  Some issues
     relating to the older SunOS 4.x are also discussed, though
     they may be out of date.

     For the most part, everything should just work.

     Starting with Solaris 8, perl5.00503 (or higher) is supplied
     with the operating system, so you might not even need to
     build a newer version of perl at all.  The Sun-supplied
     version is installed in /usr/perl5 with /usr/bin/perl
     pointing to /usr/perl5/bin/perl.  Do not disturb that
     installation unless you really know what you are doing.  If
     you remove the perl supplied with the OS, you will render
     some bits of your system inoperable.  If you wish to install
     a newer version of perl, install it under a different prefix
     from /usr/perl5.  Common prefixes to use are /usr/local and
     /opt/perl.

     You may wish to put your version of perl in the PATH of all
     users by changing the link /usr/bin/perl.  This is probably
     OK, as most perl scripts shipped with Solaris use an
     explicit path.  (There are a few exceptions, such as
     /usr/bin/rpm2cpio and /etc/rcm/scripts/README, but these are
     also sufficiently generic that the actual version of perl
     probably doesn't matter too much.)

     Solaris ships with a range of Solaris-specific modules.  If
     you choose to install your own version of perl you will find
     the source of many of these modules is available on CPAN
     under the Sun::Solaris:: namespace.

     Solaris may include two versions of perl, e.g. Solaris 9
     includes both 5.005_03 and 5.6.1.  This is to provide
     stability across Solaris releases, in cases where a later
     perl version has incompatibilities with the version included
     in the preceeding Solaris release.  The default perl version
     will always be the most recent, and in general the old
     version will only be retained for one Solaris release.  Note
     also that the default perl will NOT be configured to search
     for modules in the older version, again due to
     compatibility/stability concerns.  As a consequence if you
     upgrade Solaris, you will have to rebuild/reinstall any
     additional CPAN modules that you installed for the previous
     Solaris version.  See the CPAN manpage under 'autobundle'
     for a quick way of doing this.




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     As an interim measure, you may either change the #! line of
     your scripts to specifically refer to the old perl version,
     e.g. on Solaris 9 use #!/usr/perl5/5.00503/bin/perl to use
     the perl version that was the default for Solaris 8, or if
     you have a large number of scripts it may be more convenient
     to make the old version of perl the default on your system.
     You can do this by changing the appropriate symlinks under
     /usr/perl5 as follows (example for Solaris 9):

      # cd /usr/perl5
      # rm bin man pod
      # ln -s ./5.00503/bin
      # ln -s ./5.00503/man
      # ln -s ./5.00503/lib/pod
      # rm /usr/bin/perl
      # ln -s ../perl5/5.00503/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl

     In both cases this should only be considered to be a
     temporary measure - you should upgrade to the later version
     of perl as soon as is practicable.

     Note also that the perl command-line utilities (e.g.
     perldoc) and any that are added by modules that you install
     will be under /usr/perl5/bin, so that directory should be
     added to your PATH.

  Solaris Version Numbers.
     For consistency with common usage, perl's Configure script
     performs some minor manipulations on the operating system
     name and version number as reported by uname.  Here's a
     partial translation table:

               Sun:                      perl's Configure:
      uname    uname -r   Name           osname     osvers
      SunOS    4.1.3     Solaris 1.1     sunos      4.1.3
      SunOS    5.6       Solaris 2.6     solaris    2.6
      SunOS    5.8       Solaris 8       solaris    2.8
      SunOS    5.9       Solaris 9       solaris    2.9
      SunOS    5.10      Solaris 10      solaris    2.10

     The complete table can be found in the Sun Managers' FAQ
     <ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/jdd/sunmanagers/faq> under
     "9.1) Which Sun models run which versions of SunOS?".

RESOURCES
     There are many, many sources for Solaris information.  A few
     of the important ones for perl:

     Solaris FAQ
         The Solaris FAQ is available at
         <http://www.science.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>.




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         The Sun Managers' FAQ is available at
         <ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/jdd/sunmanagers/faq>

     Precompiled Binaries
         Precompiled binaries, links to many sites, and much,
         much more are available at <http://www.sunfreeware.com/>
         and <http://www.blastwave.org/>.

     Solaris Documentation
         All Solaris documentation is available on-line at
         <http://docs.sun.com/>.

SETTING UP
  File Extraction Problems on Solaris.
     Be sure to use a tar program compiled under Solaris (not
     SunOS 4.x) to extract the perl-5.x.x.tar.gz file.  Do not
     use GNU tar compiled for SunOS4 on Solaris.  (GNU tar
     compiled for Solaris should be fine.)  When you run SunOS4
     binaries on Solaris, the run-time system magically alters
     pathnames matching m#lib/locale# so that when tar tries to
     create lib/locale.pm, a file named lib/oldlocale.pm gets
     created instead.  If you found this advice too late and used
     a SunOS4-compiled tar anyway, you must find the incorrectly
     renamed file and move it back to lib/locale.pm.

  Compiler and Related Tools on Solaris.
     You must use an ANSI C compiler to build perl.  Perl can be
     compiled with either Sun's add-on C compiler or with gcc.
     The C compiler that shipped with SunOS4 will not do.

     Include /usr/ccs/bin/ in your PATH.

     Several tools needed to build perl are located in
     /usr/ccs/bin/:  ar, as, ld, and make.  Make sure that
     /usr/ccs/bin/ is in your PATH.

     You need to make sure the following packages are installed
     (this info is extracted from the Solaris FAQ):

     for tools (sccs, lex, yacc, make, nm, truss, ld, as):
     SUNWbtool, SUNWsprot, SUNWtoo

     for libraries & headers: SUNWhea, SUNWarc, SUNWlibm,
     SUNWlibms, SUNWdfbh, SUNWcg6h, SUNWxwinc, SUNWolinc

     for 64 bit development: SUNWarcx, SUNWbtoox, SUNWdplx,
     SUNWscpux, SUNWsprox, SUNWtoox, SUNWlmsx, SUNWlmx, SUNWlibCx

     If you are in doubt which package contains a file you are
     missing, try to find an installation that has that file.
     Then do a




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      $ grep /my/missing/file /var/sadm/install/contents

     This will display a line like this:

     /usr/include/sys/errno.h f none 0644 root bin 7471 37605
     956241356 SUNWhea

     The last item listed (SUNWhea in this example) is the
     package you need.

     Avoid /usr/ucb/cc.

     You don't need to have /usr/ucb/ in your PATH to build perl.
     If you want /usr/ucb/ in your PATH anyway, make sure that
     /usr/ucb/ is NOT in your PATH before the directory
     containing the right C compiler.

     Sun's C Compiler

     If you use Sun's C compiler, make sure the correct directory
     (usually /opt/SUNWspro/bin/) is in your PATH (before
     /usr/ucb/).

     GCC

     If you use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
     complete.  perl versions since 5.6.0 build fine with gcc >
     2.8.1 on Solaris >= 2.6.

     You must Configure perl with

      $ sh Configure -Dcc=gcc

     If you don't, you may experience strange build errors.

     If you have updated your Solaris version, you may also have
     to update your gcc.  For example, if you are running Solaris
     2.6 and your gcc is installed under /usr/local, check in
     /usr/local/lib/gcc-lib and make sure you have the
     appropriate directory, sparc-sun-solaris2.6/ or
     i386-pc-solaris2.6/.  If gcc's directory is for a different
     version of Solaris than you are running, then you will need
     to rebuild gcc for your new version of Solaris.

     You can get a precompiled version of gcc from
     <http://www.sunfreeware.com/> or
     <http://www.blastwave.org/>. Make sure you pick up the
     package for your Solaris release.

     If you wish to use gcc to build add-on modules for use with
     the perl shipped with Solaris, you should use the
     Solaris::PerlGcc module which is available from CPAN.  The



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     perl shipped with Solaris is configured and built with the
     Sun compilers, and the compiler configuration information
     stored in Config.pm is therefore only relevant to the Sun
     compilers.  The Solaris:PerlGcc module contains a
     replacement Config.pm that is correct for gcc - see the
     module for details.

     GNU as and GNU ld

     The following information applies to gcc version 2.
     Volunteers to update it as appropropriate for gcc version 3
     would be appreciated.

     The versions of as and ld supplied with Solaris work fine
     for building perl.  There is normally no need to install the
     GNU versions to compile perl.

     If you decide to ignore this advice and use the GNU versions
     anyway, then be sure that they are relatively recent.
     Versions newer than 2.7 are apparently new enough.  Older
     versions may have trouble with dynamic loading.

     If you wish to use GNU ld, then you need to pass it the
     -Wl,-E flag.  The hints/solaris_2.sh file tries to do this
     automatically by setting the following Configure variables:

      ccdlflags="$ccdlflags -Wl,-E"
      lddlflags="$lddlflags -Wl,-E -G"

     However, over the years, changes in gcc, GNU ld, and Solaris
     ld have made it difficult to automatically detect which ld
     ultimately gets called.  You may have to manually edit
     config.sh and add the -Wl,-E flags yourself, or else run
     Configure interactively and add the flags at the appropriate
     prompts.

     If your gcc is configured to use GNU as and ld but you want
     to use the Solaris ones instead to build perl, then you'll
     need to add -B/usr/ccs/bin/ to the gcc command line.  One
     convenient way to do that is with

      $ sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'

     Note that the trailing slash is required.  This will result
     in some harmless warnings as Configure is run:

      gcc: file path prefix `/usr/ccs/bin/' never used

     These messages may safely be ignored.  (Note that for a
     SunOS4 system, you must use -B/bin/ instead.)





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     Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX environment
     variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used.  Consult
     your gcc documentation for further information on the -B
     option and the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.

     Sun and GNU make

     The make under /usr/ccs/bin works fine for building perl.
     If you have the Sun C compilers, you will also have a
     parallel version of make (dmake).  This works fine to build
     perl, but can sometimes cause problems when running 'make
     test' due to underspecified dependencies between the
     different test harness files.  The same problem can also
     affect the building of some add-on modules, so in those
     cases either specify '-m serial' on the dmake command line,
     or use /usr/ccs/bin/make instead.  If you wish to use GNU
     make, be sure that the set-group-id bit is not set.  If it
     is, then arrange your PATH so that /usr/ccs/bin/make is
     before GNU make or else have the system administrator
     disable the set-group-id bit on GNU make.

     Avoid libucb.

     Solaris provides some BSD-compatibility functions in
     /usr/ucblib/libucb.a.  Perl will not build and run correctly
     if linked against -lucb since it contains routines that are
     incompatible with the standard Solaris libc.  Normally this
     is not a problem since the solaris hints file prevents
     Configure from even looking in /usr/ucblib for libraries,
     and also explicitly omits -lucb.

  Environment for Compiling perl on Solaris
     PATH

     Make sure your PATH includes the compiler
     (/opt/SUNWspro/bin/ if you're using Sun's compiler) as well
     as /usr/ccs/bin/ to pick up the other development tools
     (such as make, ar, as, and ld).  Make sure your path either
     doesn't include /usr/ucb or that it includes it after the
     compiler and compiler tools and other standard Solaris
     directories.  You definitely don't want /usr/ucb/cc.

     LD_LIBRARY_PATH

     If you have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable set, be
     sure that it does NOT include /lib or /usr/lib.  If you will
     be building extensions that call third-party shared
     libraries (e.g. Berkeley DB) then make sure that your
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes the directory
     with that library (e.g. /usr/local/lib).





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     If you get an error message

      dlopen: stub interception failed

     it is probably because your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment
     variable includes a directory which is a symlink to /usr/lib
     (such as /lib).  The reason this causes a problem is quite
     subtle.  The file libdl.so.1.0 actually *only* contains
     functions which generate 'stub interception failed' errors!
     The runtime linker intercepts links to
     "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal
     implementations of those functions instead.  [Thanks to Tim
     Bunce for this explanation.]

RUN CONFIGURE.
     See the INSTALL file for general information regarding
     Configure.  Only Solaris-specific issues are discussed here.
     Usually, the defaults should be fine.

  64-bit perl on Solaris.
     See the INSTALL file for general information regarding
     64-bit compiles.  In general, the defaults should be fine
     for most people.

     By default, perl-5.6.0 (or later) is compiled as a 32-bit
     application with largefile and long-long support.

     General 32-bit vs. 64-bit issues.

     Solaris 7 and above will run in either 32 bit or 64 bit mode
     on SPARC CPUs, via a reboot. You can build 64 bit apps
     whilst running 32 bit mode and vice-versa. 32 bit apps will
     run under Solaris running in either 32 or 64 bit mode.  64
     bit apps require Solaris to be running 64 bit mode.

     Existing 32 bit apps are properly known as LP32, i.e. Longs
     and Pointers are 32 bit.  64-bit apps are more properly
     known as LP64.  The discriminating feature of a LP64 bit app
     is its ability to utilise a 64-bit address space.  It is
     perfectly possible to have a LP32 bit app that supports both
     64-bit integers (long long) and largefiles (> 2GB), and this
     is the default for perl-5.6.0.

     For a more complete explanation of 64-bit issues, see the
     "Solaris 64-bit Developer's Guide" at <http://docs.sun.com/>

     You can detect the OS mode using "isainfo -v", e.g.

      $ isainfo -v   # Ultra 30 in 64 bit mode
      64-bit sparcv9 applications
      32-bit sparc applications




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     By default, perl will be compiled as a 32-bit application.
     Unless you want to allocate more than ~ 4GB of memory inside
     perl, or unless you need more than 255 open file
     descriptors, you probably don't need perl to be a 64-bit
     app.

     Large File Support

     For Solaris 2.6 and onwards, there are two different ways
     for 32-bit applications to manipulate large files (files
     whose size is > 2GByte).  (A 64-bit application
     automatically has largefile support built in by default.)

     First is the "transitional compilation environment",
     described in lfcompile64(5).  According to the man page,

      The transitional compilation  environment  exports  all  the
      explicit 64-bit functions (xxx64()) and types in addition to
      all the regular functions (xxx()) and types. Both xxx()  and
      xxx64()  functions  are  available to the program source.  A
      32-bit application must use the xxx64() functions in  order
      to  access  large  files.  See the lf64(5) manual page for a
      complete listing of the 64-bit transitional interfaces.

     The transitional compilation environment is obtained with
     the following compiler and linker flags:

      getconf LFS64_CFLAGS        -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
      getconf LFS64_LDFLAG        # nothing special needed
      getconf LFS64_LIBS          # nothing special needed

     Second is the "large file compilation environment",
     described in lfcompile(5).  According to the man page,

      Each interface named xxx() that needs to access 64-bit entities
      to  access  large  files maps to a xxx64() call in the
      resulting binary. All relevant data types are defined to  be
      of correct size (for example, off_t has a typedef definition
      for a 64-bit entity).

      An application compiled in this environment is able  to  use
      the  xxx()  source interfaces to access both large and small
      files, rather than having to explicitly utilize the  transitional
      xxx64()  interface  calls to access large files.

     Two exceptions are fseek() and ftell().  32-bit applications
     should use fseeko(3C) and ftello(3C).  These will get
     automatically mapped to fseeko64() and ftello64().

     The large file compilation environment is obtained with





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      getconf LFS_CFLAGS      -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
      getconf LFS_LDFLAGS     # nothing special needed
      getconf LFS_LIBS        # nothing special needed

     By default, perl uses the large file compilation environment
     and relies on Solaris to do the underlying mapping of
     interfaces.

     Building an LP64 perl

     To compile a 64-bit application on an UltraSparc with a
     recent Sun Compiler, you need to use the flag "-xarch=v9".
     getconf(1) will tell you this, e.g.

      $ getconf -a | grep v9
      XBS5_LP64_OFF64_CFLAGS:         -xarch=v9
      XBS5_LP64_OFF64_LDFLAGS:        -xarch=v9
      XBS5_LP64_OFF64_LINTFLAGS:      -xarch=v9
      XBS5_LPBIG_OFFBIG_CFLAGS:       -xarch=v9
      XBS5_LPBIG_OFFBIG_LDFLAGS:      -xarch=v9
      XBS5_LPBIG_OFFBIG_LINTFLAGS:    -xarch=v9
      _XBS5_LP64_OFF64_CFLAGS:        -xarch=v9
      _XBS5_LP64_OFF64_LDFLAGS:       -xarch=v9
      _XBS5_LP64_OFF64_LINTFLAGS:     -xarch=v9
      _XBS5_LPBIG_OFFBIG_CFLAGS:      -xarch=v9
      _XBS5_LPBIG_OFFBIG_LDFLAGS:     -xarch=v9
      _XBS5_LPBIG_OFFBIG_LINTFLAGS:   -xarch=v9

     This flag is supported in Sun WorkShop Compilers 5.0 and
     onwards (now marketed under the name Forte) when used on
     Solaris 7 or later on UltraSparc systems.

     If you are using gcc, you would need to use -mcpu=v9 -m64
     instead.  This option is not yet supported as of gcc 2.95.2;
     from install/SPECIFIC in that release:

      GCC version 2.95 is not able to compile code correctly for sparc64
      targets. Users of the Linux kernel, at least, can use the sparc32
      program to start up a new shell invocation with an environment that
      causes configure to recognize (via uname -a) the system as sparc-*-*
      instead.

     All this should be handled automatically by the hints file,
     if requested.

     Long Doubles.

     As of 5.8.1, long doubles are working if you use the Sun
     compilers (needed for additional math routines not included
     in libm).





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  Threads in perl on Solaris.
     It is possible to build a threaded version of perl on
     Solaris.  The entire perl thread implementation is still
     experimental, however, so beware.

  Malloc Issues with perl on Solaris.
     Starting from perl 5.7.1 perl uses the Solaris malloc, since
     the perl malloc breaks when dealing with more than 2GB of
     memory, and the Solaris malloc also seems to be faster.

     If you for some reason (such as binary backward
     compatibility) really need to use perl's malloc, you can
     rebuild perl from the sources and Configure the build with

      $ sh Configure -Dusemymalloc

     You should not use perl's malloc if you are building with
     gcc.  There are reports of core dumps, especially in the PDL
     module.  The problem appears to go away under -DDEBUGGING,
     so it has been difficult to track down.  Sun's compiler
     appears to be okay with or without perl's malloc. [XXX
     further investigation is needed here.]

MAKE PROBLEMS.
     Dynamic Loading Problems With GNU as and GNU ld
         If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on
         SunOS or Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld,
         see the section "GNU as and GNU ld" above.

     ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
         If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're
         using gcc, it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in
         the previous item "GNU as and GNU ld".

     dlopen: stub interception failed
         The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception
         failed' message is that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment
         variable includes a directory which is a symlink to
         /usr/lib (such as /lib).  See "LD_LIBRARY_PATH" above.

     #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
         This is a common error when trying to build perl on
         Solaris 2.6 with a gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or
         2.5.1.  The Solaris header files changed, so you need to
         update your gcc installation.  You can either rerun the
         fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
         update your gcc installation.

     sh: ar: not found
         This is a message from your shell telling you that the
         command 'ar' was not found.  You need to check your PATH
         environment variable to make sure that it includes the



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         directory with the 'ar' command.  This is a common
         problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin/
         directory.

MAKE TEST
  op/stat.t test 4 in Solaris
     op/stat.t test 4 may fail if you are on a tmpfs of some
     sort.  Building in /tmp sometimes shows this behavior.  The
     test suite detects if you are building in /tmp, but it may
     not be able to catch all tmpfs situations.

  nss_delete core dump from op/pwent or op/grent
     See "nss_delete core dump from op/pwent or op/grent" in
     perlhpux.

PREBUILT BINARIES OF PERL FOR SOLARIS.
     You can pick up prebuilt binaries for Solaris from
     <http://www.sunfreeware.com/>, <http://www.blastwave.org>,
     ActiveState <http://www.activestate.com/>, and
     <http://www.perl.com/> under the Binaries list at the top of
     the page.  There are probably other sources as well.  Please
     note that these sites are under the control of their
     respective owners, not the perl developers.

RUNTIME ISSUES FOR PERL ON SOLARIS.
  Limits on Numbers of Open Files on Solaris.
     The stdio(3C) manpage notes that for LP32 applications, only
     255 files may be opened using fopen(), and only file
     descriptors 0 through 255 can be used in a stream.  Since
     perl calls open() and then fdopen(3C) with the resulting
     file descriptor, perl is limited to 255 simultaneous open
     files, even if sysopen() is used.  If this proves to be an
     insurmountable problem, you can compile perl as a LP64
     application, see "Building an LP64 perl" for details.  Note
     also that the default resource limit for open file
     descriptors on Solaris is 255, so you will have to modify
     your ulimit or rctl (Solaris 9 onwards) appropriately.

SOLARIS-SPECIFIC MODULES.
     See the modules under the Solaris:: and Sun::Solaris
     namespaces on CPAN, see
     http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Solaris/
     <http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Solaris/> and
     http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Sun/
     <http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Sun/>.

SOLARIS-SPECIFIC PROBLEMS WITH MODULES.
  Proc::ProcessTable on Solaris
     Proc::ProcessTable does not compile on Solaris with
     perl5.6.0 and higher if you have LARGEFILES defined.  Since
     largefile support is the default in 5.6.0 and later, you
     have to take special steps to use this module.



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     The problem is that various structures visible via procfs
     use off_t, and if you compile with largefile support these
     change from 32 bits to 64 bits.  Thus what you get back from
     procfs doesn't match up with the structures in perl,
     resulting in garbage.  See proc(4) for further discussion.

     A fix for Proc::ProcessTable is to edit Makefile to
     explicitly remove the largefile flags from the ones
     MakeMaker picks up from Config.pm.  This will result in
     Proc::ProcessTable being built under the correct
     environment.  Everything should then be OK as long as
     Proc::ProcessTable doesn't try to share off_t's with the
     rest of perl, or if it does they should be explicitly
     specified as off64_t.

  BSD::Resource on Solaris
     BSD::Resource versions earlier than 1.09 do not compile on
     Solaris with perl 5.6.0 and higher, for the same reasons as
     Proc::ProcessTable.  BSD::Resource versions starting from
     1.09 have a workaround for the problem.

  Net::SSLeay on Solaris
     Net::SSLeay requires a /dev/urandom to be present. This
     device is available from Solaris 9 onwards.  For earlier
     Solaris versions you can either get the package SUNWski
     (packaged with several Sun software products, for example
     the Sun WebServer, which is part of the Solaris Server
     Intranet Extension, or the Sun Directory Services, part of
     Solaris for ISPs) or download the ANDIrand package from
     <http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~andi/>. If you use SUNWski, make
     a symbolic link /dev/urandom pointing to /dev/random.  For
     more details, see Document ID27606 entitled "Differing
     /dev/random support requirements within Solaris[TM]
     Operating Environments", available at
     http://sunsolve.sun.com .

     It may be possible to use the Entropy Gathering Daemon
     (written in Perl!), available from
     <http://www.lothar.com/tech/crypto/>.

SunOS 4.x
     In SunOS 4.x you most probably want to use the SunOS ld,
     /usr/bin/ld, since the more recent versions of GNU ld (like
     2.13) do not seem to work for building Perl anymore.  When
     linking the extensions, the GNU ld gets very unhappy and
     spews a lot of errors like this

       ... relocation truncated to fit: BASE13 ...

     and dies.  Therefore the SunOS 4.1 hints file explicitly
     sets the ld to be /usr/bin/ld.




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     As of Perl 5.8.1 the dynamic loading of libraries
     (DynaLoader, XSLoader) also seems to have become broken in
     in SunOS 4.x.  Therefore the default is to build Perl
     statically.

     Running the test suite in SunOS 4.1 is a bit tricky since
     the lib/Tie/File/t/09_gen_rs test hangs (subtest #51, FWIW)
     for some unknown reason.  Just stop the test and kill that
     particular Perl process.

     There are various other failures, that as of SunOS 4.1.4 and
     gcc 3.2.2 look a lot like gcc bugs.  Many of the failures
     happen in the Encode tests, where for example when the test
     expects "0" you get "&#48;" which should after a little
     squinting look very odd indeed.  Another example is earlier
     in t/run/fresh_perl where chr(0xff) is expected but the test
     fails because the result is chr(0xff).  Exactly.

     This is the "make test" result from the said combination:

       Failed 27 test scripts out of 745, 96.38% okay.

     Running the "harness" is painful because of the many failing
     Unicode-related tests will output megabytes of failure
     messages, but if one patiently waits, one gets these
     results:

      Failed Test                     Stat Wstat Total Fail  Failed  List of Failed
      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
      ...
      ../ext/Encode/t/at-cn.t            4  1024    29    4  13.79%  14-17
      ../ext/Encode/t/at-tw.t           10  2560    17   10  58.82%  2 4 6 8 10 12
                                                                     14-17
      ../ext/Encode/t/enc_data.t        29  7424    ??   ??       %  ??
      ../ext/Encode/t/enc_eucjp.t       29  7424    ??   ??       %  ??
      ../ext/Encode/t/enc_module.t      29  7424    ??   ??       %  ??
      ../ext/Encode/t/encoding.t        29  7424    ??   ??       %  ??
      ../ext/Encode/t/grow.t            12  3072    24   12  50.00%  2 4 6 8 10 12 14
                                                                     16 18 20 22 24
       Failed Test                     Stat Wstat Total Fail  Failed  List of Failed
      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      ../ext/Encode/t/guess.t          255 65280    29   40 137.93%  10-29
      ../ext/Encode/t/jperl.t           29  7424    15   30 200.00%  1-15
      ../ext/Encode/t/mime-header.t      2   512    10    2  20.00%  2-3
      ../ext/Encode/t/perlio.t          22  5632    38   22  57.89%  1-4 9-16 19-20
                                                                     23-24 27-32
      ../ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t       0   139    ??   ??       %  ??
      ../ext/PerlIO/t/encoding.t                    14    1   7.14%  11
      ../ext/PerlIO/t/fallback.t                     9    2  22.22%  3 5
      ../ext/Socket/t/socketpair.t       0     2    45   70 155.56%  11-45
      ../lib/CPAN/t/vcmp.t                          30    1   3.33%  25
      ../lib/Tie/File/t/09_gen_rs.t      0    15    ??   ??       %  ??



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Perl Programmers Reference Guide                   PERLSOLARIS(1)



      ../lib/Unicode/Collate/t/test.t              199   30  15.08%  7 26-27 71-75
                                                                     81-88 95 101
                                                                     103-104 106 108-
                                                                     109 122 124 161
                                                                     169-172
      ../lib/sort.t                      0   139   119   26  21.85%  107-119
      op/alarm.t                                     4    1  25.00%  4
      op/utfhash.t                                  97    1   1.03%  31
      run/fresh_perl.t                              91    1   1.10%  32
      uni/tr_7jis.t                                 ??   ??       %  ??
      uni/tr_eucjp.t                    29  7424     6   12 200.00%  1-6
      uni/tr_sjis.t                     29  7424     6   12 200.00%  1-6
      56 tests and 467 subtests skipped.
      Failed 27/811 test scripts, 96.67% okay. 1383/75399 subtests failed, 98.17% okay.

     The alarm() test failure is caused by system() apparently
     blocking alarm().  That is probably a libc bug, and given
     that SunOS 4.x has been end-of-lifed years ago, don't hold
     your breath for a fix.  In addition to that, don't try
     anything too Unicode-y, especially with Encode, and you
     should be fine in SunOS 4.x.

AUTHOR
     The original was written by Andy Dougherty
     doughera@lafayette.edu drawing heavily on advice from Alan
     Burlison, Nick Ing-Simmons, Tim Bunce, and many other
     Solaris users over the years.

     Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to
     perlbug@perl.org.



ATTRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
     attributes:

     +---------------+------------------+
     |ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE  |
     +---------------+------------------+
     |Availability   | runtime/perl-512 |
     +---------------+------------------+
     |Stability      | Uncommitted      |
     +---------------+------------------+
NOTES
     This software was built from source available at
     https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland.  The original
     community source was downloaded from
     http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.12.5.tar.bz2

     Further information about this software can be found on the
     open source community website at http://www.perl.org/.



perl v5.12.5         Last change: 2012-11-03                   14