[SOLVED] CentOS is NOT supported

[Klug]

Gasp.

You're right, sorry.

Someone played with RHN setting for that node.
The RHWAS channel was activated for that node (and not for the other node of the cluster).

That's where perl 5.8.8 comes from.

I apologise for thinking the two nodes had the same setup (well, they should...).

[hughesjr]

OK ... I have verified that zcs-5.0.0_GA_1869.RHEL4.20071218182359.tgz will NOT install if you have the perl-5.8.8 from CentOSPlus installed on CentOS-4 ... it will also not install if you have the perl-5.8.8 from RHWAS on RHEL-4. The issues are identical between RHWAS and CentOSPlus as indeed the versions of perl are also identical.

From a centos prespective, I would suggest that one does not use the perl-5.8.8 from centosplus, but instead uses the perl-5.8.5 from the main centos-4.

I do not suggest that one FORCE install Scalar::Util (as described in several other forum threads) ... though that would work until the next perl RPM upgrade to CentOSPlus.

The best thing to do would be to downgrade the perl to the correct version, which is the base version in CentOS-4.

If the zimba guys do come up with a fix for RHWAS for the RHEL4 version of Zimbra, it should also work with the CentOSPlus version of perl in CentOS-4.

[jdell]

Originally Posted by hughesjr

OK ... The best thing to do would be to downgrade the perl to the correct version, which is the base version in CentOS-4.

Ok, so just checking to see how painful this will be. I wanted to see the dependency hell I'd get with 'sudo yum remove perl-5.8.8-4.el4s1' and there were 226 packages to be removed on one of my servers.

I really don't want to use --force to downgrade, but this seems kind of nasty.

Can anyone sanity check please for the following steps?

1) 'zmcontrol stop' (and stop pretty much everything else you can think of)
2) 'sudo yum remove remove perl-5.8.8-4.el4s1' (save list of uninstalled RPM's)
3) edit /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo and add 'exclude=perl*' to [centosplus]
4) 'sudo yum install perl' (should get you 5.8.5)
5) 'sudo yum install xxx' (everything from saved list of uninstalled rpm's)
6) restart services or reboot

[hughesjr]

I would think that uninstalling perl with yum would not be a good idea, as there are many things that need perl but the version is not critical at all.

You might get several things removed that cause other problems.

I would probably try removing perl with a rpm --nodeps command (and perl-suid if you have it installed) ... then try manually installing new perl with rpm.

If there are any things that require 5.8.8 version of perl, they should complain on the install.

It would be better to test this method on a test machine first

Then, excluding perl in the centosplus repo would be good.

[hughesjr]

jdell,

if you can't create a testing install anywhere, if you send me a copy of your output of "rpm -qa | sort" to my centos e-mail address:

johnny AT centos DOT org

then I will try to duplicate the RPMS and test it for you.

[jdell]

This worked for me on a test server, but I haven't actually tried the 5.0 upgrade for real. I'm waiting for 5.0.1. YMMV...

I traded emails with hughesjr, and he suggests that this is a 'safe' way to downgrade perl 5.8.8 to perl 5.8.5 using rpm --nodeps is as follows:

Just to be safe, stop anything you think might be related to perl including zimbra

Check your perl verison
#perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i386-linux-thread-multi
#sudo rpm -e --nodeps perl-5.8.8-4.el4s1
(also uninstall perl-suid if you have it installed)
#sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo (add 'exclude=perl*' under [centosplus])
#sudo yum install perl (for me this also added perl-Filter through yum dependency checking)
#sudo reboot
#perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.5 built for i386-linux-thread-multi

After these steps, check if the directory or any code is left in /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/* That directory shouldn't exist, but if it does, then you had some perl stuff that depended on 5.8.8 in there that you should look into (reinstall for 5.8.5).

EDIT: Another item to check: View this list of RPM's that are included with CentOS Plus since they are all built against perl 5.8.8 and may have issues after downgrading perl. Check and see if you are using any of them. You may need to uninstall these RPM's and reinstall the base versions. Check here: Index of /centos/5/centosplus/i386/RPMS (if using x86_64, change URL)

Hope this helps someone out!

Regards,
John

[jdell]

Originally Posted by jdell

This worked for me on a test server, but I haven't actually tried the 5.0 upgrade for real. I'm waiting for 5.0.1. YMMV...

I traded emails with hughesjr, and he suggests that this is a 'safe' way to downgrade perl 5.8.8 to perl 5.8.5 using rpm --nodeps is as follows:

Just to be safe, stop anything you think might be related to perl including zimbra

Check your perl verison
#perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i386-linux-thread-multi
#sudo rpm -e --nodeps perl-5.8.8-4.el4s1
(also uninstall perl-suid if you have it installed)
#sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo (add 'exclude=perl*' under [centosplus])
#sudo yum install perl (for me this also added perl-Filter through yum dependency checking)
#sudo reboot
#perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.5 built for i386-linux-thread-multi

After these steps, check if the directory or any code is left in /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/* That directory shouldn't exist, but if it does, then you had some perl stuff that depended on 5.8.8 in there that you should look into (reinstall for 5.8.5).

Hope this helps someone out!

Regards,
John

Replying to myself. I downgraded perl 5.8.8 to 5.8.5 and it worked fine - upgraded 4.5.10 NE to 5.0.1 NE on CentOS 4.6. Everything is good on 5.0.1, no errors on install.

[phvt]

Thanks so much for the troubleshooting work, and for pressing on with this as a Perl version issue, not a CentOS issue.

I already had zimbra 5.0.0GA NE on this CentOS 4.6 box, installed with the workaround of forcing an install of Scalar::Util. I didn't really want to put it into production that way, though.

I followed John's steps on my test system and it worked very smoothly. I did have stuff left in /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/, but it was just the List-Util package from the previous force install, so I removed it.

After a reboot, zimbra loaded up and I was able to log in.

The only immediate issue I noticed was that one zmlogger process won't stop with "service zimbra stop" (both before and after the perl downgrade). This is already in bugzilla (18653).

Next up, reprovision the server and retest with 5.0.1.

Thanks again!
Paul

[ajayrockrock]

This issue seems to be closed but I just wanna make sure:

There are only issues with CentOS4 right? I have CentOS 5.1 and I can safely upgrade my Zimbra 4.5.10 install to Zimbra 5.0.1 right?

I'm only asking becuase the issues seem to point to perl 5.8.8 on Cent4 and on Cent5 I have perl 5.8.8.

[quanah]

The issue occurs if you upgrade perl to something other than what shipped with your OS. So if you haven't upgraded perl, then you are just fine. I.e., it is not specifically that perl 5.8.8 is "bad". It just wasn't what was shipped with CentOS4. Since 5.8.8 is what ships with CentOS5, it should be just fine, assuming you are using the 5.8.8 that shipped.

--Quanah