Latest Cpanel updates are breaking Movable type installations, wreaking havoc with 500 Server Error messages and causing core dumps all over the place. Here’s the kludgish workaround, that, well, works.

A user on MT forums suggested that downgrading to DBD::Mysql 2.9007 should do the trick. It does. Six Apart seems to be aware of it.

Here’s a little script for Cpanel/WHM users to execute on their SSH shells. Save it as, say, “dbidowngrade.sh” in your root folder, CHMOD it to 755, and execute it with “./dbidowngrade.sh” at the command prompt.

Important Note:

Yes, some people will have problems with Cpanel updating their DBD::Mysql with the /upcp script, in which case you should probably set up a cron job to execute the above script on a regular basis. I have it up as hourly and it takes just a few seconds. I have commented out the lines in green because you don’t need to download the file from CPAN more than once.

Please remember, this is merely a temporary solution. Movable Type should of course have an update soon, and Cpanel should shortly start providing the 3.0001 version in the near future.

Update: July 8, 2005

The latest update of DBD::Mysql, 3.0001_3, works for me. So here’s the new code:

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/src

wget -O dbd.tar.gz "http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/C/CA/CAPTTOFU/DBD-mysql-3.0001_3.tar.gz"
gzip -cd dbd.tar.gz | tar xf -
rm -rf dbd.tar.gz

cd DBD-mysql-3.0001_3
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

Update: July 6, 2005

Looks like the DBD::Mysql author has released a 3.0001_2 developer update. I haven’t been able to install it, it gives me a bunch of errors but that’s par for the course from ‘developer’ versions of software. YMMV. I’ll stick with the 2.9007 for now.

Original method: Downgrading surely works

#!/bin/sh
#---------------------------------------------
# Script to downgrade to DBD::mysql 2.9007
#---------------------------------------------
cd /usr/src
wget -O dbd.tar.gz "http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/DBD/DBD-mysql-2.9007.tar.gz"
gzip -cd dbd.tar.gz | tar xf -
rm -rf dbd.tar.gz
cd DBD-mysql-2.9007
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

# Clean up
cd /usr/src
rm -rf DBD-mysql-2.9007