Movable Type Workaround for Cpanel update woes

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.

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
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9 Responses to Movable Type Workaround for Cpanel update woes

  1. Craig M says:

    Thanks a bunch for this post. It gives me some “Failure” errors on my machine, but whatever it is, it works.

  2. netgain says:

    i think your script assumes a linux type os. it may be useful to mention that.

  3. sniptools says:

    Note: The textarea above with the code in it is automatically linking the URLs. Please strip the A HREF tags before using it. Best idea is to use it as a reference. Most sysadmins will of course know what I’m talking about, for others, YMMV.

  4. scripty says:

    It has been discovered that downgrading only DBD::Mysql to 2.9006 will do the job. No need to downgrade DBI. Thanks for these instructions.

  5. sniptools says:

    Scripty, thanks for the info. It works. Have update the article accordingly.

  6. melanie90 says:

    I’ve been following this issue on the six apart pronet mailing list and found this areticle. my customers is asking me when I will fix the issues with DBD::mysql so I have to decide what to do and when to do it. six apart employees said that they expected cPanel servers that were applying automatic updates to pick up DBD::mysql 3.0001_3 and apply it today. but this is not happening to my server.

  7. sniptools says:

    According to six apart cpanel will include the file in its next /upcp update. If you have that the updates set to manual, you may want to change it to automatic. In general, installing 3.0001_3 manually should do the job as well, for the time being.

  8. ed girth says:

    Actually the Cpanel update is working with 3.0001 but it’s not 3.0001_3 so I would suggest sticking with the cron method for now.

  9. thriftyrocker says:

    FWIW, my host wouldn’t do a global update to 3.0001_3 so I had them install it in my user directory, then I copied all the files from the ‘lib’ directory in DBD to ‘extlib’ in the MT install and it worked. If your host won’t update globally, this is probably a good workaround!

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