Perl PPM

Ronnie has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've just installed active state Perl onto a Windows XP PC with a view to doing some administration of remote PC's on our network. Before I go any further I'm not a Network or Windows type person as yet - I tend to work on Solaris/Unix servers. The installation of Perl v5.6.1 went okay (A VERY basic script runs fine) but I now need to install the Win32 extensions and some additional modules that thus far I think I'll need. When trying to use the search command with ppm I get the following error :-

Error connecting to 'http://ppm.ActiveState.com/cgibin/ppmserver.pl?urn:ppmserver'

I'm guessing that this is because I'm working behind a firewall? Is this correct? Does anyone know how to circumvent this? Ithought I'd cheat and just download the WIN32 tar file and extract it into C:\Perl\bin directory. This seemed to work but when I ran the query command from ppm I didn't see any sign of the WIN32 extensions. Should this have worked?

Comment on Perl PPM

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Re: Perl PPM by jdtoronto (Prior) on Oct 17, 2006 at 13:21 UTC
My first question would be why did you install such an old Perl? The Win32 modules are all installed with the current releases. jdtoronto	[reply]
Re^2: Perl PPM by Ronnie (Scribe) on Oct 17, 2006 at 16:10 UTC
I thought that I had loaded the latest ActivePerl from ActiveState. On the download page - http://www.activestate.com/store/download.aspx? prdGUID=81fbce82-6bd5-49bc-a915-08d58c2648ca I selected the Windows AS Package for download and installation, if this isn't the latest version of Perl for Windows can you point me at the correct URL please (especially if it includes the Win32 extensions). I first tried the MSI Package but got an error message to the effect that "The installation package could not be opened - not a valid installer package."	[reply]
Re^3: Perl PPM by Asim (Hermit) on Oct 17, 2006 at 17:49 UTC
I just checked the link you gave. Unless your browser is quite different than mine, you should check the page again, please. On the left, ActivePerl 5.8.8.819 -- the one we recommend. On the right, ActivePerl 5.6.1.638. Both have As and MSI versions. And, again -- I'm still uncertain which "Win32 extensions" you speak of. Look at your installed docs; you'll see many, many Win32 extensions already installed standard, and ActiveState 5.8x is like 5.6x in that regard, I assure you. ----Asim, known to some as Woodrow.	[reply]
Re^3: Perl PPM by ww (Archbishop) on Oct 17, 2006 at 16:37 UTC
`c:\perl -v`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Perl PPM by doowah2004 (Monk) on Oct 17, 2006 at 14:24 UTC
I had a similar problem when setting up Perl at the hospital where I work. It was an issue with the firewall/proxy that the hospital used. There is a work around by setting the http_proxy. I did a quick search on google and found this Hope that this helps.	[reply]
Re: Perl PPM by marto (Cardinal) on Oct 17, 2006 at 17:22 UTC
Did you try reading the documentation from the vendors website? This has been covered here before Super Search is always your friend. Also check out Installing Modules regarding installing modules without using ppm. Martin	[reply]
Re: Perl PPM by Asim (Hermit) on Oct 17, 2006 at 14:44 UTC
I'd second doowah2004's comment, with the additional note that this page is in the HTML documentation ActivePerl installs. Indeed, I highly recommend reading through the PPM section of the docs, esp. coming from a *NIX environment. PPM does things a bit differently, and your comments indicate to me that you might be well served by exploring those differences a tad. Also: I recommend using 5.8, as well; it works really well on Win32 platforms. I'm also curious as to what Win32 extensions you're needing, as from my experience, the ActivePerl install comes with the majority of the "base" Win32 Perl modules -- indeed, many were written and are maintained by ActiveState employees. ----Asim, known to some as Woodrow.	[reply]


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