After building the
server, it's a
good idea to test it throughly by calling:
panic% make test
Fortunately, mod_perl comes with a big collection of tests, which
attempt to exercise all the features you asked for at the
configuration stage. If any of the tests fails, the make
test step will fail.
Running make test will start the freshly built
httpd on port 8529 (an unprivileged port),
running under the UID (user ID) and GID (group ID) of the
perl Makefile.PL process. The
httpd will be terminated when the tests are
finished.
To change the default port (8529) used for the tests, do this:
panic% perl Makefile.PL PORT=xxxx
Each file in the testing suite generally includes more than one test,
but when you do the testing, the program will report only how many
tests were passed and the total number of tests defined in the test
file. To learn which ones failed, run the tests in verbose mode by
using the
TEST_VERBOSE parameter:
panic% make test TEST_VERBOSE=1
As of mod_perl v1.23, you can use the environment variables
APACHE_USER and APACHE_GROUP to
override the default User and
Groupsettings in the
httpd.conf file used for make
test. These two variables should be set before the
Makefile is created to take effect during the
testing stage. For example, if you want to set them to
httpd, you can do the following in the
Bourne-style shell:
Tests
are
invoked by running the ./TEST script located in
the ./t directory. Use the
-v option for verbose tests. You might run an
individual test like this:
panic% perl t/TEST -v modules/file.t
or all tests in a test subdirectory:
panic% perl t/TEST modules
The TEST script starts the server before the
test is executed. If for some reason it fails to start, use
make start_httpd to start it manually:
panic% make start_httpd
To shut down Apache when the testing is complete, use make
kill_httpd:
panic% make kill_httpd
3.3.2. make test Troubleshooting
The following sections cover problems that you
may encounter during the testing stage.
3.3.2.1. make test fails
make test requires Apache to be running already,
so if you specified NO_HTTPD=1 during the
perl Makefile.PL stage, you'll
have to build httpd independently before running
make test. Go to the Apache source tree and run
make, then return to the mod_perl source tree
and continue with the server testing.
If you get an error like this:
still waiting for server to warm up...............not ok
you may want to examine the t/logs/error_log
file, where all the make test-stage errors are
logged. If you still cannot find the problem or this file is
completely empty, you may want to run the test with
strace (or truss) in the
following way (assumming that you are located in the root directory
of the mod_perl source tree):
panic% make start_httpd
panic% strace -f -s1024 -o strace.out -p `cat t/logs/httpd.pid` &
panic% make run_tests
panic% make kill_httpd
where the strace-f option
tells strace to trace child processes as they
are created, -s1024 allows trace strings of a
maximum of 1024 characters to be printed (it's 32 by
default), -o gives the name of the file to which
the output should be written, -p supplies the
PID of the parent process, and & puts the
job in the background.
When the tests are complete, you can examine the generated
strace.out file and hopefully find the problem.
We talk about creating and analyzing trace outputs in Chapter 21.
3.3.2.2. mod_perl.c is incompatible with this version of Apache
If you had a
stale Apache header layout in one of
the include paths during the build process, you
will see the message "mod_perl.c is incompatible
with this version of Apache" when you try to execute
httpd. Find the file
ap_mmn.h using find,
locate, or another utility. Delete this file and
rebuild Apache. The Red Hat Linux distribution usually installs it in
/usr/local/include.
Before installing mod_perl-enabled Apache from scratch,
it's a good idea to remove all the pre-installed
Apache modules, and thus save the trouble of looking for files that
mess up the build process. For example, to remove the precompiled
Apache installed as a Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) package, as
root you should do:
panic# rpm -e apache
There may be other RPM packages that depend on the Apache RPM
package. You will be notified about any other dependent packages, and
you can decide whether to delete them, too. You can always supply the
—nodeps option to tell the RPM manager to
ignore the dependencies.
apt users would do this instead:
panic# apt-get remove apache
3.3.2.3. make test......skipping test on this platform
make test may report
some tests as
skipped. They are skipped because you are
missing the modules that are needed for these tests to pass. You
might want to peek at the contents of each test; you will find them
all in the ./t directory. It's
possible that you don't need any of the missing
modules to get your work done, in which case you
shouldn't worry that the tests are skipped.
If you want to make sure that all tests pass, you will need to figure
out what modules are missing from your installation. For example, if
you see:
modules/cookie......skipping test on this platform
you may want to install the Apache::Cookie module.
If you see:
modules/request.....skipping test on this platform
