Setup Instructions for the Classroom System Administrator

The Big Picture

The Perl Jumpstart course can be adapted for a variety of classroom hardware configurations:
• A roomful of NT boxes
• A roomful of Unix workstations
• Terminal emulators (on PCs or workstations) connecting to a Unix host

Required Software

Each student's desktop machine (or the shared Unix host if the terminal emulation hardware configuration is being used) must be equipped with:
• A web browser -- Netscape or Internet Explorer
• Connection to the Internet
• A Perl interpreter -- 5.005 or later. Get the standard Perl from http://www.Activestate.com/ActivePerl. Installation instructions are below.
• A text editor -- Perl error messages include source code line numbers, so the ability to locate lines in source code files by line number is essential for debugging. Make sure you have an editor that shows line numbers.
  • For NT, suitable choices include:
    • edlin, DOS's antique, crusty line editor
    • textpad, a full-featured shareware graphical text editor for Win32 platforms. Download it from ftp://ftp.textpad.com/ or from Dan Keller's site.
  • For Unix, vi and emacs have line-numbering modes that can be enabled.

Installing Perl

Installing Perl on Windows NT

1. Using your Windows NT Explorer, create a folder called perl in your C: drive.
2. Download the Perl interpreter self-installing software from http://www.Activestate.com/ActivePerl.
3. Allow perl to be installed in c:\perl.
4. Let the HTML documentation be installed unless you have a slow machine.
5. Let it be installed in c:\perl\html.
6. Let the root of the perl HTML tree be the default.
7. Let the installation proceed.
8. Follow the instructions to add Perl to your Path variable. Open the Control Panel and double-click the System icon. Click the Environment tab. Scroll down the System Variable list and highlight Path. Now scroll down to the Value input field, click in it and use the right-arrow key to move to the end. Once you are there, add the string ;c:\perl. Click Set, then Apply, then Ok.

Installing Perl on Unix

1. The tasks required here demand advanced system administration skills... don't try this at home, kids! :-)
2. If you are building a Perl interpreter for use by any user (including the web server) you need root privilege in order to write in /usr/local/lib and related system directories.
3. For Unix, you must download and compile the source code.
4. Get it from CPAN's source code directory.
5. You'll need an ANSI C compiler (such as gcc) and gzip (get them from GNU).
6. After installing Perl, download and install the Perl module GD.pm. Find the latest version in the CPAN directory.
7. Install the module using CPAN's installation instructions.

Making Sure Everything Works

Testing Perl on Windows NT

1. Open a new DOS window.
2. Don't use one that was opened before you changed the Path variable.
3. Run perl -v. It should report version 5.005 or newer.

Testing Perl on Unix

1. Make sure the installation location for Perl is in your path.
2. Run perl -v. It should report version 5.005 or newer.
3. Run the following command:

   perl -e "use GD;"

   There should be no messages if the GD.pm module is correctly installed.