Re: [PATCH] doc: INSTALL: note OpenBSD xapian-bindings-perl package

["Štěpán Němec" <stepnem@smrk.net>]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2023 21:51:03 +0000
Eric Wong wrote:

> Štěpán Němec <stepnem@smrk.net> wrote:
>> Tangentially related: I've taken this opportunity to review my (OpenBSD)
>> install script and found one other package I needed to install that
>> isn't mentioned in INSTALL, namely, p5-IO-Socket-SSL.
>
> Is there a test which fails without it?  It should be optional
> (warnings emitted, functionality degrading gracefully and tests
> automatically skipped).

Yeah, false alarm, sorry.  I now tried a clean install, and it (what I
want, i.e., NNTP and HTTP) does work without it.  I guess I only needed
it because I initially tested public-inbox handling TLS itself?  I later
thought better of it anyway and put it behind a proxy.

As for the tests, I have never tried running any (was too scared, sorry,
there seems to be way too many of them for me to audit ATM, and I didn't
feel like digging through the makefile maze to understand what the test
targets really do, either), but now that I tried in the throwaway
install, it only got this far:

t/address.t .................. ok
t/admin.t .................... ok
t/altid.t .................... ok
t/altid_v2.t ................. ok
t/cgi.t ...................... ok
t/cindex.t ................... 37/?

Has been stuck there for a Real Long Time now (half an hour or so).

(That's "make test" with latest master.)

Both the HTTP and NNTP servers do work, though, so I guess it's
something with the test or the cindex functionality (which I know next
to nothing about).

All info I have for you is a stuck perl process after ^Cing out of the
test run:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ   RSS TT  STAT   STARTED       TIME COMMAND
pi       18600  0.0  6.5 53884 66800 p1  I       3:51PM    0:04.99 perl: -cindex -q --prune -d /tmp/pi-cindex-18600-9QG_/ext (perl)

Attaching to the process didn't provide anything (nothing from ktrace,
continuing after attaching with gdb got stuck, too, killing the gdb
process finally got rid of the perl one as well).

> On a side note, running OpenBSD i386 via QEMU on amd64 Linux is
> very slow.  Hoping OpenBSD amd64 will be faster...

My experience with QEMU is limited, but running amd64 OpenBSD on an
amd64 Linux host seemed OK last time I tried (2 years ago?).  Running
aarch64 Linux on amd64 Linux was unusably slow, even on a recentish
laptop.

BTW, if you're up for a slightly Kafkaesque experience, you can get a
few free VPSes at Oracle Cloud, {amd,arm}64.  That's where the test
install described above is running.  I've heard varying experiences and
wouldn't put there anything I'm not prepared to lose, but I have to
admit I've also been running a Tor relay and a DNS server there (both
recursive and authoritative backup) for almost a year now, and, if
anything, it's been more stable than my paid VPS at Vultr.  I could also
give you access to the test install at least (OpenBSD 7.3).

>> I didn't report it or give it too much thought at the time, as I was
>> under the impression that the INSTALL file wasn't quite up-to-date or
>> definitive, anyway (that impression being corroborated by my previous
>> experience installing public-inbox on Arch Linux: IIRC there were some
>> dependency surprises there, too, unfortunately I didn't keep any notes
>> then), but seeing you touching these parts now I figured I'd mention it.
>
> INSTALL ought to be definitive and up-to-date as there's
> optional and non-Perl dependencies which (AFAIK) can't be
> specified in Makefile.PL

Noted.  (In my defense, there _is_ "TODO: this still needs to be
documented better" in the INSTALL file.)

-- 
Štěpán