perl Makefile.PL
Can't locate ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.6/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.6 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.7/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.6/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.7 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.6 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8 .) at Makefile.PL line 1.

BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at Makefile.PL line 1.

If you happen to encounter this error while installing a perl configured script, it may be possible that your machine doesn't have perl MakeMaker so you need to update perl and its libraries

Installation on Fedora

yum install perl-devel

on Debian/Ubuntu

apt-get install perl-devel

This would install the latest stable version of perl and its dependent libraries. After update run the command

perl Makefile.PL

I everything is all right you may see a message like this

Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for HTTPD::Bench::ApacheBench

ApacheBench is the package I was installing on my system.

Working with CVS

Though there are lot of tutorials on the internet for one to find out how to work with CVS. I would like to put few handy commands that I have found it difficult to recall when needed. That's going to save some time at least.

How do I checkout a branch?
cvs [-d /<cvs directory>] checkout -r <branch name> <release name>

This would checkout your files in the folder

How do I checkout a single file from cvs?
cvs [-d /<cvs directory>] co <release name>/<path to file>

NB: Text within <> symbols have to be replaced with actual names as they exist on your CVS repository.

nawk - where to find it?

If at the time of configuring your program on linux the configure script says "nawk not found" you don't need to panic, though there is every reason to be, as, if your program requires you must provide. For achieving that you should create a soft link to awk as nawk

ln -s /usr/awk /usr/nawk

configure make and install

Compiling ServerLimit in Apache 2.x

I had some requirement from my client that required me to set the ServerLimit directive of apache to increase my server limit. So that Apache can serve more number of clients I increased the MaxClients to 500 and after a restart I started receiving warning messages after server start saying to lower my MaxClients limit as ServerLimit was set to 256. One change that has been incorporated in Apache 2.2.x is that ServerLimit cannot be set through configuration files any more for mpm-prefork.

Workaround for this is to compile Apache with increased ServerLimit. So, before you compile, open prefork.c that would be at /server/mpm/prefork/prefork.c
and find the text "DEFAULT_SERVER_LIMIT" then go to the line that says #define DEFAULT_SERVER_LIMIT
there you would find 256 against this directive, change it to the value that you need your ServerLimit to, I changed it to 1000.

Configure, make and make install, and you are all set