First, check the the official MiniVend web site for information:
http://www.minivend.com/minivend/
If you are unable to get MiniVend installed, it is almost always a problem
with the Perl installation. Common problems include:
-
Broken development versions of Perl. In particular, FreeBSD and
BSDI sometimes ship with development versions.
Solution is to update Perl.
-
Your Perl has threading enabled. This may cause problems for MiniVend on
some operating systems. Try building a Perl without threading.
-
Occupied default port (7786) or interfering firewall during the test. This
causes 'make test' to fail while MiniVend might still work just fine.
-
Bad installation of Perl. This is often an inexperienced system administrator who copies the Perl binary directly to a system bin directory without using 'make install'.
A proper Perl will need to be installed.
-
Inadequate system privileges or quota restrictions. If you have a virtual
memory quota then MiniVend can easily exceed it.
-
A Perl earlier than 5.004 is a problematical installation. It may work if your Perl is properly set up and you have a good
C compiler available, but it may not. Update to Perl 5.005.
-
Solaris 2.x with an inadequate
C compiler will not be able to compile vlink.c and
tlink.c. Use tlink.pl as your link program.
There are many more possible problems. See the
README file for other OS-specific problems.
Second, double check that you have done the following things:
-
Checked all of the error.log files? There is one for each catalog, and a global one in
the MiniVend software root directory.
-
The vlink program is
SUID, or you have made appropriate changes in the ReadPermission and WritePermission directives. With MiniVend 3.0, you should try
INET mode.
-
If you run
CGI-WRAP, have you turned off the
SUID bit for vlink with a ``chmod 755 cgi-bin/simple'' or the like?
-
Have you tried copying the
INET mode link program
tlink
over the
cgi-bin/simple
or simple.cgi
program?
-
That you have proper permissions on all files that need to be written. This includes the product database
ASCII source files, needed because of locking.
-
If the function in question is from an external program (such as
PGP) you have tried the command as shown in the directive
from the command line.
-
The vlink
CGI program is being executed on a machine that has
the socket file etc/socket on a directly attached disk. UNIX-domain sockets will not work on
NFS-mounted filesystems! That means the server minivend.pl and the
CGI program vlink must be executing on the same machine. As of MiniVend 2.03, you can use
INET mode and the tlink program instead if you must cross
NFS boundaries.
If you have a problem you are not able to correct, and you have taken all
of those steps, you can send email to the MiniVend users list:
minivend-users@minivend.com
Please include your operating system name and version, your
Perl version, the DBM library in use, and the contents of
ALL error logs.
Please see this if you don't get an answer:
http://www.minivend.com/minivend/the_authors_life.txt
MiniVend is an ambitious and complex program, and is not presented as being easy to use, easy to install, or bug-free. The configuration script was done to try and make a very painful process
only slightly painful. Some people install in one pass. Others never make
it. Determined and thoughtful users almost always make MiniVend work.