I've been trying to get the OpenACS jukebox up and running.  I
confess to knowing nothing about PERL.  I'm unable to run the root
commands specified in the documentation to install the perl CPAN
module "MPEG::MP3Info" as I don't have FTP access to the outside
world.  Is there anyway of using the "MP3::Info" module that came
with the jukebox module for the original ACS instead?  I tried
changing the perl script "mp3_file_scan" to use the old module, but I
get the error:

Can't locate MP3/Info.pm in @INC (@INC
contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-
linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-
linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 .)
at /disk2/shrubweb/tss/packages/mp3-jukebox/bin/mp3_file_scan line 5.
    BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
at /disk2/shrubweb/tss/packages/mp3-jukebox/bin/mp3_file_scan line 5.
        while executing
    "exec "[acs_root_dir]/packages/mp3-jukebox/bin/mp3_file_scan"
$target_filename"

Can someone tell a no-clue-perl-user how to get this module installed
properly?

I'm running my server on port 80 by starting it as root and switching
the process to nsadmin.  Also using the latest AOLServer (3.4.2) +
patches from Mat Kovach against a recent OpenACS tarball (4th April
2002).

Many Thanks,

Dave Newhook

Read about it here

In this case, I think you should create a subdirectory called MP3 somewhere, put Info.pm in it and then tell Perl where to start looking for the MP3 sub-directory. So, if you set things up like this:

/home/newhook/MP3/Info.pm

you would say:

use lib '/home/newhook';

and so when Perl went looking for library (i.e. module) directories where there was a subdirectory called MP3, it would now find it off of /home/newhook.

Of course, you want to make sure that the "use lib /home/newhook" line appears before the "use MP3::Info.pm" line in the code, since otherwise Perl will try to load the Info.pm module before you tell it that there's a new directory that it should use when looking for modules.

The article above, btw, doesn't mention that you can also add libraries by using the "-I" flag in the first line of the Perl file (i.e. the "shebang" line (shebang = hash-bang = #!)) like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -I/home/newhook (I forget if you'd need to quote the directory path or not when using -I)

The rest of the error message, btw, tells you what library directories Perl does know about, that is, which directories are in the @INC array. By using one of the techniques above, you will add another directory to the @INC array and so Perl will be able to find Info.pm (btw, .pm = perl module = library).

I wrote that segment of the original MP3 Jukebox for ACS, although I haven't looked at the openACS module, so caveat reador.. Your problem is that you need to specify @INC to include a local directory (any one that you have write / read access to will do) which contains a directory named MPEG, and then MP3Info.pm in that directory.

The original MP3 jukebox uses the -I flag when calling perl to allow a user to specify a local directory in which modules are kept. This flag is set in the tcl file packages/mp3jukebox/www/scanner.tcl: it's the following line in the original module:

set file_info [exec "perl" -I[acs_root_dir]/packages/mp3jukebox/bin [acs_root_dir]/packages/mp3jukebox/bin/mp3_file_scan $target_filename]

Is someone else interested in this module? If you Walter are really interested please mail me in a week or two to remind me it. Right now I'll be concentrated with the jchat module.