Building your own installer package (Debian/Ubuntu)

[dnj]

Hello,

It seems I'm not the only one who has had trouble with squeezeboxserver not starting recently, due to Perl having trouble loading bundled CPAN modules. I got things running with locally built CPAN modules, by reading this forum.

However I prefer to have my software packages fully handled by a package manager, so I have spent a little while putting together a way to build a Debian package with locally built CPAN modules. I figured others might be interested in such a package, so here's a small guide. It's currently .deb specific, but making it work for rpms shouldn't be too hard.


Installing needed software

Various software is needed to build the software, but I found it the easiest to install a bundle, rather than figuring out exactly what was or wasn't needed:

$ sudo aptitude install debhelper fakeroot build_essential subversion nasm

Get and patch a copy of the source tree

In a new folder, run:

$ svn co http://svn.slimdevices.com/repos/slim/7.6/trunk

Save the attached patch to your build folder, and apply it:

$ cd trunk
$ patch -p0 < ../buildCPAN.patch

The patch is needed for the build scripts to build CPAN modules for the package, and to find Perl 5.12.4, which is the current Perl in Debian testing.

Build the package

Depending on your system, you may need a different set of modules built. If you don't know which modules are failing on your machine, run /usr/sbin/squeezeboxserver, it tell you in the output. With the patched build script, you can give a comma separated list of modules to rebuild. Note that if "XML::Parser::Expat" is failing, you have to put just the name "XML::Parser" in the list.

I used this command to build my current package:

./buildme.pl --build debian --buildDir ../build/ --sourceDir . --destDir ../ --releaseType nightly --fakeroot --buildCPAN EV,XML::Parser,HTML::Parser,JSON::XS,Digest::SHA1,YAML::Syck,Sub::Name,Image::Scale

If all goes well, your package will be ready for you one folder out, install:

$ sudo dpkg -i ../squeezeboxserver_<some version number>

You may find that your first list of failing modules wasn't complete so the software still wont start. In that case, figure out which modules are failing now, and build again, adding to the list of modules to build. For me, this just added Image::Scale.

Enjoy!

[periferral]

hey. thanks for helping out with this. i got someplace but still dont have a working install.

After many unsuccessful builds, i got as far as this

./buildme.pl --build debian --buildDir ../build/ --sourceDir . --destDir ../ --releaseType nightly --fakeroot --buildCPAN EV,XML::Parser,HTML::Parser,JSON::XS,Digest::SHA1,YAML::Syck,Sub::Name,Image::Scale,DBI,Audio::Scan,Class::XSAccessor,DBD::SQLite,Template::Stash::XS

The server seems to start and isnt dying but .. i see this in my logs

2011-07-17 23:26:03 squeezeboxserver_safe started.
[11-07-17 23:26:03.9361] main::init (349) Starting Squeezebox Server (v7.6.0, r32728, Sun Jul 17 23:11:00 PDT 2011) perl 5.012004
[11-07-17 23:26:04.0900] Slim::bootstrap::tryModuleLoad (289) Warning: Module [Template::Stash::XS] failed to load:
Couldn't load Template::Stash::XS 2.21:

Can't load '/usr/share/squeezeboxserver/CPAN/arch/5.12/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/auto/Template/Stash/XS/XS.so' for module Template::Stash::XS: libssp.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory at /usr/lib/perl/5.12/DynaLoader.pm line 192.
 at /usr/lib/perl5/Template/Stash/XS.pm line 31

BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/Template/Stash/XS.pm line 31.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 720) line 2.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 720) line 2.

Notice, I added the that in the include but it didnt seem to do anything. The server does not respond to requests and I cant access anything on port 9000 using the browser. any suggestions?

[dnj]

Try replacing "Template::Stash::XS" by just "Template":

./buildme.pl --build debian --buildDir ../build/ --sourceDir . --destDir ../ --releaseType nightly --fakeroot --buildCPAN EV,XML::Parser,HTML::Parser,JSON::XS,Digest::SHA1,YAML::Syck,Sub::Name,Image::Scale,DBI,Audio::Scan,Class::XSAccessor,DBD::SQLite,Template

If you open trunk/vendor/CPAN/buildme.sh there's a list of strings that work in the function "build_all".

[periferral]

perfect thanks. works finally!

[dnj]

That's great.

I have build tested the instructions with 7.5, which appeared to work too. Simply replace "7.6" with "7.5" when checking out the source tree.

[youen]

Hello,

I don't know why, but the deb file is not created for the 7.5 trunk and the 7.6 trunk.

dh_installdirs: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
cp: impossible d'évaluer «*/home/squeeze_7.5/build/platforms/../server/revision.txt*»: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
make: *** [install] Erreur 1

# Copy the revision file
cp /home/squeeze_7.5/build/platforms/../server/revision.txt /home/squeeze_7.5/build/platforms/debian/squeezeboxserver/usr/share/squeezeboxserver/
mv: impossible d'évaluer «*../build//*.deb*»: no file or folder of that type

I'm using a debian sid with French language. Any Idea ?

thanks,
youen

[dnj]

As I read the first quoted part, your machine can't find the file "build/server/revision.txt". The build script is supposed to fill that with the number following "Last Changed Rev:" in the output of "svn info".

The output of "svn info" is probably in French on your machine, so it doesn't say "Last Changed Rev:" anywhere.

You could try changing the script to look for the correct French string on your machine (it's line 316 in trunk/buildme.pl), but I don't know if the scripts depends on the machine locale in other places. Or you could try temporarily switching to an English locale while building the package.

[youen]

Thanks, That was the issue. I was looking in that kind of direction in the buildme.sh, but didn't though at the locale.

Now, I think I'm facing the last issue :

The following modules failed to load: DBD::mysql GD

I tried with dbd::mysql instead of SQLite, but it didn't change anything.

[dnj]

If you passed DBD:mysql and GD to --buildCPAN, and those modules are still failing, I'd imagine the build of them failed.

Try going to vendor/CPAN and run ./buildme.sh DBD::mysql and ./buildme.sh GD and if those commands fail, see if you can figure out if it's due to some missing package(s).

[periferral]

i got the same thing with 7.5. 7.6 compiled fine. dnj's suggestion makes sense. I'll try that and see. GD compiled fine but mysql was still failing.

why does the build script explicitly link to perl5.XX rather than just point to /usr/bin/perl? Debian links perl to perl5.XX anyway. That would just make it easier to compile and build.