TWiki on AIX

Tips when installing TWiki 4.3.2 on an IBM AIX Version 5.3. and HTTPServer:

1. Don't use AIX's native TAR when extracting the TWiki .gz distribution (see: DoNotUseAIXtarUseGNUtarInstead)

2. Instead get the GNU tar. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/os/aix/linux/toolbox/alpha.html

3. Be sure to specify the path to the GNU tar binary when you extract. For example:

$ gunzip -dc TWiki-4.3.2.gz | /opt/freeware/bin/tar -xvf -

4. You will also need to grab the GNU grep from http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/os/aix/linux/toolbox/alpha.html as well. And change references to grep when setting up the configuration

5. Unless the "optional" Unicode::String Perl module is installed you may need to edit the twiki/lib/TWiki/Render.pm per Support.SID-00291 or you may get a Unicodepath error when 1st launching the TWiki, something like:

TWiki detected an internal error - please check your TWiki logs and webserver logs for more information. Can't locate Unicodepath in @INC (@INC contains: path . ..

This is the manual fix for it: Instead of fighting CPAN install you can manually patch the twiki/lib/TWiki/Render.pm file:

A. Remove this line:
use Unicode::String qw(utf8 latin1 utf16be);

B. Replace the following two lines:

    my $utf8AnchorName = Unicode::String->new($anchorName);
    $anchorName = $utf8AnchorName->substr(0, 32);
    with this line:
    $anchorName =~ s/^(.{32})(.*)$/$1/; # limit to 32 chars

6. When running the configure script, you may see CGI Setup --> Claims CGI user userid = root. However it does not appear that TWiki is running as root, see: Support.SID-00524 for more information.

7. Don't use the Perl that ships with the AIX, instead grab a recent stable Perl version, such as version 5.10.1

8. To get the twiki.conf file to be recognized it must be referenced from the hppd.conf file with a statement such as: Include conf/twiki.conf

9. You may need To Increase the Maximum Length of the Command Line or you may see "Could not perform search. Error was: exec failed: Arg list too long grep" search errors:

1. Determine the value of the ncargs attribute.
   lsattr -EH -l sys0 | grep ncargs
2. If the value of the ncargs attribute is less than 16 4-Kbyte blocks, increase the value to 16.
   chdev -l sys0 -a ncargs=16

Contributors: GregNeugebauer - 2009-10-09

Discussions

I am trying to Install Twiki on AIX 4.3.3.0 Apache 1.3.6 Perl 5.005_03

-- PabloClifton - 08 Jul 2003

I've installed TWiki 02 Sept 2004 on AIX 5.2. It just worked with no special work-arounds -- just a few oddities like diff's path: /usr/linux/bin. Most of the open source utils get installed to /usr/opt/freeware/bin, with links to /usr/bin.

I initially tried the Bull AIX Freeware versions of some of the pre-reqs, but I had trouble with Apache (sorry, I don't recall the exact problem). I ended up using RPMs from IBM. I already had PERL 5.8.0. I needed Apache 1.3.31, expat 1.95.7, rcs 5.7.2, and diffutils 2.8.1.

-- JosephThvedt - 28 Jan 2005

I've successfully upgraded to 4.0.1 with only a few missteps on the way. The upgrade script failed to upgrade a couple of .css files. That made pages look really ugly, particularly tables-of-contents, which were unreadable. There were also a handful of topics that gave me an RCS error if I try to edit them. I think this is the same as the problem described in DakarReleaseUpgradeGuide. I manually edited the ,v files to change what appears to be an owner field (was "root", now it's "nobody").

-- JosephThvedt - 14 Feb 2006

I've upgraded to TWiki 4.2 on AIX 5.3. It was mostly uneventful. Between my last TWiki upgrade and this one, both the hardware and the OS were replaced, and search hadn't been working properly. The TWiki upgrade motivated me to finally figure it out. I was using the AIX versions of egrep and fgrep, which do not work properly with TWiki. I installed the GNU versions, changed my SafeEnvPath to point to them, and all is well.

-- JosephThvedt - 30 Jun 2008

Thank you GregNeugebauer for sharing your installation tips with the TWiki community. I moved your tips to the top and refactored the text a bit.

-- PeterThoeny - 2009-09-12

So we upgrade our AIX system from 5.x to 7.1 and this broke our development TWiki, any ideas if we need to upgrade Perl, Apache, or Twiki as well. We are running Per 5.10.1 and Twiki 4.3.2

When I go to: http://twikidev/bin/view I now see the following error:

TWiki detected an internal error - please check your TWiki logs and webserver logs for more information. Can't locate Unicodepath in @INC (@INC contains: path . path-thread-multi path path-thread-multi path path path path path-thread-multi path path) But see things are fine in the access.log when going to http://twikidev/bin/view

Also in the Twiki warning log we are seeing:

| 2016-06-29 - 09:10 | TWiki::Plugins::CalendarPlugin could not be loaded. Errors were: Can't locate Date/Calc.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /twikidata/twiki/lib /twikidata/twiki/bin /usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.10.1/aix-thread-mul ti /usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.10.1 /usr/opt/perl5/lib/site_perl/5.10.1/aix-thread-multi /usr/opt/perl5/lib/site_perl/5.10.1 /usr/opt/perl5 /lib/site_perl . /twikidata/twiki/bin /twikidata/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//arch /twikidata/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1/aix-thread-multi /tw ikidata/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//5.10.1 /twikidata/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib/) at /twikidata/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/CalendarPlugin.pm line 219. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /twikidata/twiki/lib/TWiki/Plugins/CalendarPlugin.pm line 219. Compilation failed in require at (eval 39) line 1. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 39) line 1.

-- Greg Neugebauer - 2016-06-30

I don't know whether AIX has some package manager to install Perl packages, but when upgrading you need to make sure that the new AIX versions also has all the required CPAN modules. In your case, CPAN:Date::Calc is missing, but it isn't needed by the Perl core - so unless you have a calendar on your page, everything seems just fine. In the absence of a package manager, the mantra to install modules is: <verbatim> cpan install Date::Calc </verbatim>

However, I've never heard of a CPAN module named Unicodepath. It would be nice to know where it is required... perhaps it is a homegrown module for a homegrown plugin? TWiki's codebase doesn't have it.

And yes, both your Perl and TWiki versions are somewhat neolitihic. But who am I to complain - I've still the same versions in active use (though an upgrade might happen this summer).

-- Harald Jörg - 2016-06-30

Greg: Best to ask support questions in the Support forum.

See also HowToInstallCpanModules.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2016-07-01

Harald we have no homegrown modules or plugins. With our system I did have to edit the render.pm (an edit that is still in place) on the original install to handle a similar Unicodepath error as per: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Support/SID-00291

-- Greg Neugebauer - 2016-07-01

So... have you tried the solutions / workarounds in SID-00291? There's either a patch suggested by Peter, or installing CPAN:Unicode::String? I admit that I am at a loss since I have no AIX system and never encountered that problem on TWiki 4 for the past 10 years or so. Anyway, before I'd continue working with some edits in Render.pm I'd rather upgrade both Perl and TWiki. The current Perl version is 5.24, and I doubt that the TWiki devs have fun with thoroughly testing TWiki on seven different Perl versions. Especially unicode support has improved a lot, and many of the old versions (before 5.18) might fail in rather interesting ways.

-- Harald Jörg - 2016-07-01

I am going to try installing Unicode::String. If that fails I could upgrade to Perl 5.24. So if we upgrade to Perl 5.24 do we then need to reinstall or update any other Perl modules we installed for the TWiki? Also am I required to upgrade the TWiki if we upgrade the Perl version?

-- Greg Neugebauer - 2016-07-05