Configuring mod_perl

To run mod_perl, you'll need to uncomment two lines in your httpd.conf file.

After the main LoadModule section, there's a list of three additional modules. Uncomment the perl_module line so that instead of:

#LoadModule perl_module		modules/libperl.so

It reads:

LoadModule perl_module		modules/libperl.so

After the main AddModule section, there's another list of three additional modules. Uncomment the mod_perl.c line so that instead of:

#AddModule mod_perl.c

It reads:

AddModule mod_perl.c

After you've uncommented these two lines, save the httpd.conf file and then restart your server as described in the section called Starting and Stopping Your Server in Chapter 4. You should now be running mod_perl.

The mod_perl package is large and fairly complicated. It would be impossible to include all it can do in this guide. Since the most commonly used role of mod_perl is as a replacement for CGI, that capability is already set up for you in the Apache configuration file, http.conf. The mod_perl configuration directives are surrounded by <IfModule> tags, indicating that the directives are processed if mod_perl.c was compiled in to the Apache server. By default, the module was compiled in, so mod_perl should be ready to go. The pertinent lines in httpd.conf are as follows:

<IfModule mod_perl.c>
  Alias /perl/ /home/httpd/perl/
  <Location /perl>
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlHandler Apache::Registry
    Options +ExecCGI
  </Location>
</IfModule>

/home/httpd/perl/ can be any directory where you want to store your Perl scripts. The /home/httpd/perl/ directory will be like a cgi-bin directory. /perl/ is the directory where browsers will access scripts on your server with URLs that start with http://your_domain/perl/.

For more information on using mod_perl as a CGI replacement refer to the cgi_to_mod_perl Perl documentation by running the command:

perldoc cgi_to_mod_perl

For more information on mod_perl's configuration and capabilities, please refer to the Apache/Perl Integration Project web pages at http://perl.apache.org/.