SID-02103: Configure Broken : Failed to load the perl module CGI

Status:	Answered	TWiki version:	6.0.1	Perl version:	TWiki-VM-6.0.1-1
Category:	CategoryInstallation	Server OS:	RedHat - TWiki-VM-6.0.1-1	Last update:	7 years ago

Hi,

I was trying to have DirectedGraphPlugin working. I installed a few Perl modules and all of a sudden, I can't configure my twiki any more (twiki is still working all right though). The page says :

Software error:

Failed to load the perl module CGI qw(:any). The module could not be found.

Please ensure that:

1. CGI qw(:any) is installed,
2. that the module is available on the @INC path,
3. that the webserver user (apache) has permission to read the CGI qw(:any).pm file.

=The detailed error seen was: CGI -any pragma has been REMOVED. You should audit your code for any use of none supported / incorrectly spelled tags and remove them at /usr/share/perl5/CGI.pm line 925. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 7) line 2.=

For help, please send mail to the webmaster (root@localhost), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.

So i typed perl -MCPAN -e 'upgrade CGI' and got the following message : all modules are up to date for CGI I tryed to set the permissions for twiki (not sure how to do that for perl)

But I still get the same message

-- Sebastien Digard - 2015-09-17

Discussion and Answer

I am sorry you run into the CGI module gotcha. It is a moving target with incompatible changes.

See SID-02079 and AddCGIpmToTWikiCore.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2015-09-18

Thanks Peter. I am not out of the woods yet... Those guys have a grater experience than I have, so I'm blocked at the 'downgrading CGI to 4.03'.

I downloaded the 4.03 version, and tried to install it following the process described here : Install_CPAN_modules_manually But I get an error:

Array found where operator expected at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 483, at end of line
   (Do you need to predeclare Carp::longmess?)
Array found where operator expected at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 484, at end of line
   (Do you need to predeclare Carp::shortmess?)
Array found where operator expected at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 485, at end of line
   (Do you need to predeclare Carp::shortmess?)
Array found where operator expected at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 486, at end of line
   (Do you need to predeclare Carp::longmess?)
syntax error at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 483, near "Carp::longmess @_"
syntax error at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 484, near "Carp::shortmess @_"
syntax error at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 485, near "Carp::shortmess @_"
syntax error at /usr/share/perl5/CGI/Carp.pm line 486, near "Carp::longmess @_"
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm line 11.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm line 11.
Compilation failed in require at Makefile.PL line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 1.

I don't really know how to proceed now...

-- Sebastien Digard - 2015-09-18

Dependency issue. You would need to downgrade CGI::Carp too.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2015-09-18

Hi All, I couldn't get to downgrade my Perl modules.

As I've been using the VM version of twiki, here is my sledgehammer solution (works for dummies like me): 1- archive your /var/www/twiki folder on a shared folder 2- create a new virtual box, install a new TWiki-VM-6.0.1-1 on it 3- override the twiki folder with the archived one

Brutal. but it worked for me.

-- Sebastien Digard - 2015-09-22

When you restore make sure to omit twiki/data/TWiki and twiki/data/TWiki/pub. If you restore that you mix the old and new TWiki installation, e.g. new preferences settings, new system layout with old templates.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2015-09-22

A new extension is now available that addresses the CGI issue: CgiContrib - for background see AddCGIpmToTWikiCore.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2015-10-28

Recently, I tried to reach the configuration of the TWiki, and got the following error:

Failed to load the perl module CGI qw(:any). The module could not be found.

Please ensure that:

1. CGI qw(:any) is installed,
2. that the module is available on the @INC path,
3. that the webserver user (www-data) has permission to read the CGI qw(:any).pm file.

The detailed error seen was: CGI -any pragma has been REMOVED. You should audit your code for any use of none supported / incorrectly spelled tags and remove them at /usr/share/perl/5.10/CGI.pm line 933. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 7) line 2.

Apparently, TWiki only allows a CGI.pm file lower than 4.04 (http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Support/SID-02079).

So I checked the CGI.pm file in the location mentioned in the error (/usr/share/perl/5.10 is a symbolic link to /usr/share/perl/5.10.1), and saw the following version number:

$CGI::VERSION='4.38';You can also check the version of the CGI.pm file by issuing the following command:

perl -e 'use CGI; print $CGI::VERSION."\n"'

Since I have TWiki 6.0.1 (in the past, I successfully updated from 4.3 to 6.0.1, but I was not able to update the 6.0.1 to 6.0.2...), the CGI Contrib Package solution (http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/CgiContrib) was no option.

Since I had installed perl 5.12 alongside the default 5.10 version on Ubuntu 10.04, I looked for the version of the CGI.pm included with that perl version. It appeared to be 3.48, which is good for TWiki.

I downloaded the 3.48 release of CGI.pm from: http://search.cpan.org/~lds/CGI.pm-3.48/ and uncompressed it.

In /usr/share/perl/5.10.1, I renamed CGI.pm file to CGI438.pm and the CGI folder to CGI438.

Then I copied the contents of the lib subfolder of the uncompressed downloaded CGI to /usr/share/perl/5.10.1.

Afterwards, I was able again to reach the configure page of TWiki.

-- Stijn Bousard - 2018-03-02

By the way, I am using Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS

-- Stijn Bousard - 2018-03-02

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