DBD::Pg -- the DBI PostgreSQL interface for Perl # $Id: README 11184 2008-05-02 16:51:05Z turnstep $ DESCRIPTION: ------------ This is version 2.6.4 of DBD-Pg. The web site for this interface, and the latst vesion, can be found at: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Pg/ The development of DBD::Pg can be tracked at: http://svn.perl.org/modules/DBD-Pg/trunk/ The mailing list is at: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.dbd.pg/ For information about PostgreSQL, visit: http://www.postgresql.org/ For information on what has changed for each version, see the Changes files. IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS OR COMMENTS: --------------------------------- Please send any problems and comments to Please include what OS you are using, and the version of Perl, DBI, and DBD::Pg you are using. Also tell which version of PostgreSQL DBD::Pg was compiled against, and which version you are connecting to. The easiest way to gather all of this information is to run "make test", which outputs it all early in the tests. BUG REPORTS ----------- If you feel certain you have found a bug, you can file a bug report by visiting: http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=DBD-Pg and selecting the "Report a new bug" link. Please check that the bug has not already been reported first. REQUIREMENTS: ------------- build, test, and install Perl 5 (at least 5.6.1) build, test, and install the DBI module (at least 1.52) build, test, and install PostgreSQL (at least 7.4) build, test, and install Test::Simple (at least 0.47) You must also have the pg_config executable installed (to check, type "which pg_config" on unix-like systems). If pg_config is not available, then you need to install the development package for PostgreSQL. For example on Debian: apt-get install postgresql-dev; on RedHat: yum install postgresql-devel. This development package is needed even if you already have PostgreSQL up and running since DBD::Pg uses it for its installation. INSTALLATION: ------------- Before installing, please use the "cpansign -v" program to cryptographically verify that your copy of DBD::Pg is complete and valid. The program "cpansign" is part of Module::Signature, available from CPAN. By default Makefile.PL uses App::Info to find the location of the PostgreSQL library and include directories. However, if you want to control it yourself, define the environment variables POSTGRES_INCLUDE and POSTGRES_LIB, or define just POSTGRES_HOME. Note that if you have compiled PostgreSQL with SSL support, you must define the POSTGRES_LIB environment variable and add "-lssl" to it, like this: export POSTGRES_LIB="/usr/local/pgsql/lib -lssl" The usual steps to install DBD::Pg: 1. perl Makefile.PL 2. make 3. make test 4. make install Do steps 1 to 3 as a normal user, not as root! If the script cannot find the pg_config information itself, it will ask you for the path to it. Enter the complete path to the pg_config file here, including the name of the file itself. TESTING: -------- The tests rely on being able to connect to a valid Postgres database. The easiest way to ensure this is to set the following environment variables: DBI_DSN=dbi:Pg:dbname= DBI_USER= DBI_PASS= If you are running on a non-standard port, you must set PGPORT or add the port to the DBI_DSN variable like this: DBI_DSN='dbi:Pg:dbname=;port=' Put double quotes around the dbname if it has a semicolon or a space inside of it: DBI_DSN='dbi:Pg:dbname=""' If no valid connection is found, the tests will use the "initdb" program to try and create a Postgres database cluster to test with. The first available port starting at 5440 will be used. You can increase the verbosity of the tests by setting the environment variable TEST_VERBOSE. You can also enable tracing within the tests themselves by setting DBD_TRACE to whatever trace level you want. Be aware that setting the trace level can result in extremely verbose output. When reporting test failures, please use TEST_VERBOSE=1, do *not* set DBD_TRACE unless requested, and send only the relevant sections. If the first connection fails and DBI_DSN is not set, the tests may attempt to connect as the user 'postgres' to the database 'postgres'. See the t/dbdpg_test_setup.pl for the exact process. Please consdier installing CPAN::Reporter so that your tests are automatically gathered and reported, which helps the development of DBD::Pg. TROUBLESHOOTING: ---------------- * Placeholder issues If you find that some of your queries containing placeholders are no longer working, this may because DBD::Pg now uses the native PostgreSQL placeholders on the server itself whenever possible. Previously, DBD::Pg did a simple emulation of placeholders, so the rules were not as strict. You should either rewrite your queries to make them legal SQL syntax for PostgreSQL, or turn off server-side prepares. To change your queries, make sure that the type of each placholder can be determined by the PostgreSQL parser. So instead of: SELECT ? use something like: SELECT ?::int To turn off server-side prepares completely (with a loss of some performance and features), do this at the top of your scripts: $dbh->{pg_server_prepare} = 0; This can also be set for individual queries at the statment handle level: see the documentation for more details. * PostgreSQL library issues: If you are using the shared library libpq.so check if your dynamic loader finds libpq.so. With Linux the command /sbin/ldconfig -v should tell you where it finds libpq.so. If ldconfig does not find libpq.so, either add an appropriate entry to /etc/ld.so.conf and re-run ldconfig or add the path to the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH. A typical error message resulting from not finding libpq.so is: install_driver(Pg) failed: Can't load './blib/arch/auto/DBD/Pg/Pg.so' for module DBD::Pg: File not found at If you get an error message like: perl: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/i386-linux/auto/DBD/Pg/Pg.so: undefined symbol: PQconnectdb when you call DBI->connect, then your libpq.so was probably not seen at build-time. This should have caused 'make test' to fail; did you really run it and look at the output? Check the setting of POSTGRES_LIB and recompile DBD-Pg. * Perl issues: Some Linux distributions have incomplete perl installations. If you have compile errors like "XS_VERSION_BOOTCHECK undeclared", do: find .../lib/perl5 -name XSUB.h -print If this file is not present, you need to recompile and re-install perl. If you get a message about "use of uninitialized value in -d" when doing a "make install_vendor", you can work around this by adding a dummy value to the INSTALLVENDORBIN environment variable: make install_vendor INSTALLVENDORBIN=/tmp (thanks to Peter Eisentraut ) * SGI issues: If you get segmentation faults, make sure you are using the malloc which comes with perl when compiling perl (the default is not to). (thanks to "David R. Noble" ) * HP issues: If you get error messages like: can't open shared library: .../lib/libpq.sl No such file or directory when running the test script, try to replace the 'shared' option in the LDDFLAGS with 'archive'. (thanks to Dan Lauterbach ) * FreeBSD issues: If you get during "make test" the error message: 'DBD driver has not implemented the AutoCommit attribute' recompile the DBI module and the DBD-Pg module and disable optimization. This error message is due to the broken optimization in gcc-2.7.2.1. If you get compiler errors like: In function `XS_DBD__Pg__dr_discon_all_' `sv_yes' undeclared (first use in this function) it may be because there is a 'patchlevel.h' file from another package (such as 'hdf') in your POSTGRES_INCLUDE dir. The presence of this file prevents the compiler from finding the perl include file 'mach/CORE/patchlevel.h'. Do 'pg_config --includedir' to identify the POSTGRES_INCLUDE dir. Rename patchlevel.h whilst you build DBD::Pg. * Sun issues: If you get compile errors like: /usr/include/string.h:57: parse error before `]' then you need to remove from pgsql/include/libpq-fe.h the define for strerror, which clashes with the definition in the standard include file. * Win32 issues: For installation, please see the README.win32 file. Running DBD-Pg scripts on Win32 needs some configuration work on the server side: o add a postgres user with the same name as the NT-User (eg Administrator) o make sure, that your pg_hba.conf on the server is configured, such that a connection from another host will be accepted * OS X issues: You may need to add "-lssl" and "-lcrypto" to your LIB variable before compiling. (thanks to ) If having problems compiling, try running: env -i command This trick stops 'command' from inheriting environment variables from the shell process, which more often than not fixes up such weird build errors without having to do anything else in particular. (thanks to David Landgren ) * SCO issues: If the 'make test' gives an error about a symbol not being found, you can correct the problem by manually running ld after the 'make' command: LD_RUN_PATH="/usr/local/pgsql/lib" ld -G -L/usr/local/lib Pg.o \ dbdimp.o -o blib/arch/auto/DBD/Pg/Pg.so -L/usr/local/pgsql/lib -lpq \ -L/opt/K/SKUNK2000/Gcc/2.95.2pl1/usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/i386-pc-sco3.2v5.0.5/2.95.2/ \ -lgcc Once this is done, 'make test' succeeds properly. (thanks to ) COPYRIGHT: ---------- Copyright (c) 2002-2008 Greg Sabino Mullane and others: see the Changes file Portions Copyright (c) 2002 Jeffrey W. Baker Portions Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Edmund Mergl Portions Copyright (c) 1994-1997 Tim Bunce You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.