Problem running CGI::Application under modperl2

[scorpio17]

Dear Monks,

I have a CGI::Application based webapp that runs fine as a normal cgi-bin script, but I'm trying to evolve it into a mod_perl handler for performance reasons.

I'm using the following environment:
Apache 2.0.59 (Unix)
mod_perl 2.0.3
perl 5.8.5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4
All perl modules listed below refer to the latest versions currently on CPAN.
You can assume that I restart the web server after any edits.

What follows is the smallest example I can write to reproduce the problem:

package MyApp::Small;

use base 'CGI::Application';
#use CGI::Application::Plugin::Apache qw(:all); # Note#3

use strict;

use Apache2::RequestRec ();
use Apache2::RequestIO ();
use Apache2::RequestUtil ();

#use CGI::Application::Plugin::Session;        # Note#1
#use CGI::Application::Plugin::Authentication; # Note#2

use Apache2::Const -compile => qw(OK);

sub handler : method {
  my ($pkg, $r) = @_;
  my $self = $pkg->new();
  $self->run();
  return Apache2::Const::OK;
}

sub setup {
  my $self = shift;
  $self->start_mode('mode1');
  $self->run_modes(
    'mode1' => 'mode1',
    'mode2' => 'mode2',
  );
}

sub mode1 {
  my $self = shift;
  my $output = "<p>This is page 1.\n";
  return $output;
}

sub mode2 {
  my $self = shift;
  my $output = "<p>This is page 2.\n";
  return $output;
}

1;

In my apache config file, I have the following:

<Location /small>
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlResponseHandler  MyApp::Small
</Location>

So, as shown above, I can access the URL http://myhost.com/small and I see the message "This is page 1."

If I uncomment the line indicated by Note#1, everything still works.

However, if I uncomment the line indicated by Note#2, I get the following error in the apache log file:

Error executing class callback in prerun stage:
Failed to Create CGI::Session object ::
Reason: new(): failed:
query object CGI=HASH(0x841395c) does not support cookie() and param() methods:
Can't locate Apache/RequestUtil.pm in @INC

At this point, I thought the problem was with using CGI.pm behind the scenes in CGI::Session (which is used by the Authentication plugin) so I tried using the CGI::Application::Plugin::Apache module, which is supposed to allow easy migration to mod_perl. But after uncommenting the line in Note#3, I get this error:

Usage: Apache2::RequestUtil::request(classname, svr=Nullsv)
at /path/to/libs/CGI/Application/Plugin/Apache.pm line 64.

This error remains even if I go back and comment out the lines indicated by Note#1 and Note#2.

I've searched online (including the archives here) and so far have been unable to figure out where I'm going wrong.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

UPDATE: As it turns out, I did not have the latest version of every module from CPAN. I had installed the latest CGI.pm under my home directory, but an older version installed previously was ahead of it in @INC, so I wasn't using the version that I thought I was. Now that I've corrected that, problems #1 and #2 have gone away.

And #3 is a known problem (thanks mpeters!).

[mpeters]

As far as #2 goes, I'm not sure why that's happening. It should work. CGI.pm should be good enough. Now, for #3 that's a known issue with CGI::Application::Plugin::Apache on mod_perl 2. I've had the fix in my code for a while but just haven't uploaded it to CPAN. I have repented and it's now in the PAUSE queue, so it should be available soon.

[Anonymous Monk]

Thanks for the info.

I experienced apache complaining about 'Apache::RequestUtil' not being found after doing an up2date on RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 system.

The custom mod_perl applications that were trying to start depend on CGI.pm so per your experience I installed the latest version of CGI.pm (3.33) via cpan and that resolved the startup error. <sigh of relief>