OK to Install CPAN PERL Libs on Satellite 6 Server?

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Hi All - I'm in need of the CPAN PERL libs to be installed on my Satellite 6 server. Problem is, I'm afraid I could introduce a problem by installing the CPAN libs. Does anyone have some experience they can talk about from installing the CPAN PERL libs on a Satellite server?

It seems to me to be a fairly harmless thing to do, but way back in April 2015, there WAS a problem introduced by installing the CPAN libs on a Satellite server that broke things. Here's the somewhat-bizarre knowledgebase article: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1178263

(It actually does not SAY "CPAN broke it" but that's what I found from Google searches)

Question I have for the community is:
- Anyone out there putting CPAN on their Satellite 6 server?
- Anything else to know about that besides the yum install perl-CPAN command?

Thanks;
James

Responses

Alternate idea: create a server specific for CPAN, then have PERL scripts in my enterprise reference the CPAN libs on that server? Anyone have any thoughts on that approach?

I'm open to any options anyone might be able to come up with....

This should not be an issue since nothing in Satellite 6 users perl.

Bryan - these are in-house scripts that give us functionality we are looking for from our Satellite server. I appreciate your response, and I was thinking along those very same lines.

We have an old kickstart/pxeboot server that has an old version of CPAN installed, and the rpm command doesn't work on it. For that reason, I've been investigating what might happen on Satellite 6 if I install CPAN there.

The likely answer I'm coming up with is "Nothing - it should be OK to install CPAN". However, Red Hat isn't venturing an opinion at all and simply says "Not Recommended".

The truth of it is, a Satellite 6 server is meant to do Satellite 6 functions and nothing else. Satellite 6 places enough of a load on a RHEL 7 system and has enough complicated things going on, that I can easily understand - to keep it in a supported configuration to get help from Red Hat, don't do anything to it outside the realm of Satellite 6.

I'm starting to wonder: Is there no one writing PERL scripts these days to run on RHEL 7? I've been doing some research and come across a lot of articles on "The Death of PERL".

I am an old-ish system admin (hint: I can spell VAX) and I think titles like that are silly and inflammatory - much like an old "Superman DIES!" comic book headline.

However, I serve a big stable of DevOps programmers and what's going on in the dev ops and programming world is important to me, since it determines what kinds of things I might have to build for these guys.

The best article I've found so far is one on FastCompany.com: https://www.fastcompany.com/3026446/the-fall-of-perl-the-webs-most-promising-language

The "answer" in the fastcompany.com article can be summed up in one word: Python.

That doesn't help me for this problem, because converting the PERL scripts I'm moving would cost money (programmer time) I don't want to spend. So I still need the CPAN libs and still need to figure out how to get them in-house without corrupting my Satellite 6 server.

I think the answer is that I need to establish an internal CPAN mirror and reference the libraries there. However, I'm not finding any detailed information on how or if it's possible to reference CPAN modules on a mirrored CPAN "server". So I continue my research. If I get anything useful, I'll post it here to close out the thread.....

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