Geek post: AxKit is kicking my ass.

So I volunteered to try AxKit, and XML to web framework, for the Fink Project. I’ve now spent four weeks trying to get it to work. Here’s what I think I’ve figured out about installing AxKit:

On RH9 or Fedora:

  • Don’t use apache2. Use apache1. That means install from source, and install mod_perl first.
    1. extract the extract the “apache source”
    2. extract the mod_perl source
    3. configure mod_perl with: “perl Makefile.PL APACHE_SRC=../apache_1.3.29/src DO_HTTPD=1 USE_APACI=1 EVERYTHING=1”
    4. in mod_perl, do a “make && make test && make install”
    5. cd to ../apache_1.3.29 and do a “make install”
  • install Apache-Test by hand
  • install Apache-Request by hand
  • install the JavaScript binary
  • install Sablotron and Sablotron-devel binaries. This does not build well, from what I’ve found.
  • install XML-Sablotron from source.
  • install libghttp (and probably libghttp-devel) from your RH install media
  • start cpan (perl -MCPAN -e shell) and install:
  • Time::Piece
  • HTTP::GHTTP
  • AxKit
  • AxKit::XSP::Util

On FreeBSD

AxKit can also be installed quite easily on FreeBSD 4.9 using the ports system IF YOU UPDATE FIRST However, it doesn’t seem to work well after it installs.


And that sums up a lot of what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks.

BTW, CPAN sucks, mainly because there’s a series of dependencies that can’t be resolved automatically when everyone is changing their packages all the time.

I’ve also found that the Compaq Presario 5360 is a horrible POS.

RedHat Fedora won’t install properly with CDs because of disk errors. I had to do a “linux net” boot from an http server using install floppies.

NetBSD and FreeBSD boot floppies don’t work, either. I had to move the hard drive to another computer to install FreeBSD.