BerkeleyDB Version 0.03 5th May 1998 Copyright (c) 1997/8 Paul Marquess. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. WARNING This is alpha quality code. Do not assume that the interface defined here is stable. Do not assume that the code is stable enough to write real applications. Consider yourself warned. DESCRIPTION ----------- BerkeleyDB is a module which allows Perl programs to make use of the facilities provided by Berkeley DB version 2. (Note: if you want to use version 1 of Berkeley DB with Perl you need the DB_File module). Berkeley DB is a C library which provides a consistent interface to a number of database formats. BerkeleyDB provides an interface to all three of the database types (hash, btree and recno) currently supported by Berkeley DB. For further details see the documentation included at the end of the file BerkeleyDB.pm. PREREQUISITES ------------- Before you can build BerkeleyDB you need to have the following installed on your system: * Perl 5.004_02 or greater. * Berkeley DB. Version 2.3.14 or greater The official web site for Berkeley DB is http://www.sleepycat.com/db. The ftp equivalent is ftp.sleepycat.com:/pub. BUILDING THE MODULE ------------------- Assuming you have met all the prerequisites, building the module should be relatively straightforward. If you are running Solaris 2.5 read the Solaris Notes section below. The first step is to edit the file config.in to suit you local installation. Instructions are given in the file. The module can now be built and tested using this sequence of commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test INSTALLATION ------------ make install Solaris Notes ------------- If you are running Solaris 2.5, and you get this error when you run the BerkeleyDB test harness: libc internal error: _rmutex_unlock: rmutex not held. you probably need to install a Sun patch. It has been reported that Sun patch 103187-25 (or later revisions) fixes this problem. To find out if you have the patch installed, the command "showrev -p" will display the patches that are currently installed on your system. FEEDBACK -------- How to report a problem with BerkeleyDB. To help me help you, I need of the following information: 1. The version of Perl and the operating system name and version you are running. If you are running a newish version of Perl, the output from running "perl -V" will tell me all I need to know. If your perl doesn't understand the -V flag, then not only do you have quite an old version of Perl, you very likely have an old version of BerkeleyDB. You should consider upgrading. The problem you have might already be fixed. 2. The version of BerkeleyDB you have. If you have successfully installed BerkeleyDB, this one-liner will tell you: perl -e 'use BerkeleyDB; print "BerkeleyDB ver $BerkeleyDB::VERSION\n"' If you haven't installed BerkeleyDB then search BerkeleyDB.pm for a line like this: $VERSION = "1.20" ; 3. The version of Berkeley DB you have installed. 4. If you are having problems building BerkeleyDB, send me a complete log of what happened. 5. Now the difficult one. If you think you have found a bug in BerkeleyDB and you want me to fix it, you will *greatly* enhance the chances of me being able to track it down by sending me a small self-contained Perl script that illustrates the problem you are encountering. Include a summary of what you think the problem is and a log of what happens when you run the script, in case I can't reproduce your problem on my system. If possible, don't have the script dependent on an existing 20Meg database. If the script you send me can create the database itself then that is preferred. I realise that in some cases this is easier said than done, so if you can only reproduce the problem in your existing script, then you can post me that if you want. Just don't expect me to find your problem in a hurry, or at all. :-) CHANGES ------- See the Changes file. Paul Marquess