Slashcode

FreeBSD is real cool. You can use CVSUP to update your source tree. Then when you feel like it, do a cd /usr/src then a make world and boom. New FreeBSD system. All up to date.....etc....etc...

Well, there are some other things you have to do too. Especially if your running Slash on it.

First, you should rebuild the Kernel and use mergemaster. Then reboot.

Second, FreeBSD STILL defaults to installing 5.005_03 of Perl. YUCK!. You have to install Perl 5.6.1 again. Not a big deal. Follow This and you'll be fine.

Next, you have to check the Perl libraries. I always do a "perl -MCPAN -e shell" and a "install Bundle::CPAN" and then a "install Bundle::Slash" just to make sure. I suppose you could recompile everything if you wanted as well...I also usually cd to where I have the Slash source and make and make install it again to be safe.

During some of the CVSes of FreeBSD I've had to recompile Apache and Mod_Perl. Especially when they moved from 4.2 to 4.3. Having just completed a move from 4.3 to the latest Stable (which reads 4.4 pre-release). I did not have to change Apache.

I currently run a couple of Slash 2.0 sites on my Dual Pentium II 333 with 512 megs of ram and a 40 Gig hard drive. The box is ROCK SOLID. It's a great platform to run a webserver from!

I cvsuped to the latest version of slash 2 last week. They finally got the Perl::Indexhandler thing working.

Now, if only the Makefile on FreeBSD would work (copy -u not good on freebsd).

Ok, finally received an email from Cliff on the Slash
devel list. Seems he doesn't have a FreeBSD or Solaris
machine to test the makefile with. Thats been some of
the problem with updating. I have to edit the Makefile,
delete 3 lines, change the cp flags to remove the
unsupported -u flag and edit the Makefile in plugins
as well.
<P>It's a mess, but it installs. Except I get all
kinds of .pl.bak files installed as well.
<P>Also, the simplestory theme I've been told doesn't work.
So why is it there?!?! I dunno........stupid me for trying
to install it and seeing that it didn't work. Oh well...
<P>But hey, it's free software, what do I expect?

I've posted to the Slash dev list.....but.......no reply.

There are a couple of issues with the Bender stuff that don't seem to work with FreeBSD 4.2, like the makefile. It has an invalid cp flag in there. And the placement of the slash startup daemon didn't happen correctly.

I also wasn't able to get a SimpleStory theme happening. It errored out. Most of the Template things didn't make it into the database for some reason. I was going to post this on slash dev list, but.......like I'd get a response.........

Seems that the FreeBSD geeks are almost done with the latest release of FreeBSD. Using the CVSUP utility gets you 4.3 RC. I installed it over the weekend, and Slash didn't work right. Seems they changed the libraries around that Perl calls to, so I'd have to recompile all the Perl libraries. Spent about an hour sunday morning with it, and decided to restore off of the week before's backup.

Hopefully BENDER will be done soon (yeah, right, sure...whatEver) and I can migrate everything to it. I think the problem is that the documentation on how to get everything over is still sketchy. Maybe if Krow stopped doing yardwork the docs would be in better shape........