[Catalyst] Template rendering error under mod_perl

Could be a permission issue, has the user the webserver runs under
access to that path / those files?

The user/group permissions on root/src and root/lib and the files
therein are the same as for lib/MyApp.pm, so presumably that isn't the
issue? There is nothing obvious in the error_log, though Apache doesn't
seem to log file permission errors even under debug mode.

Apache may load code while still root.

su to the user it runs at and try to cd into the MyApp dir and cat a template
file.

OK, contrary to my previous post, it clearly is a file permissions issue
(thanks KiKi), as chmod 777 * -R in MyApp fixed the problem at a stroke
(it's not on a public server!). Changing all directories to 755 and
files to 644 (or 666 if need to be writable) seems to retain functionality.

Could I have avoided this embarrassment by using Makefile.PL in the app
directory? OT I know, but what is the recommended permissions for files
and directories for web-apps run under Catalyst/mod_perl?

It should never be necessary to make a file or directory world-
writable. If you find yourself needing to, then you?ve done
something wrong with the account situation on the machine.

(I know you said this isn?t production; I wanted to reinforce
that this is a Bad Idea.)

Regards,

Depending on how you installed it under mod_perl, you may find that
you need to set 'home' in your configuration for path_to to work, if
you don't explicitly set the path to the home directory, Catalyst
will try to figure it out by looking for your Makefile.PL/Build.PL or
by figuring out where the libraries are installed, but that may not
be the correct location for your root directory. Take a look at
Catalyst::Utils for the home method to see how it figures it out...

I didn't actually 'install' it as such, just copied the MyApp directory
under my /home folder, added the path/to/MyApp/lib to mod_perl's lib in
startup.pl file so it can find MyApp.pm, and re-started the server. It
looks like Catalyst _can_ find the 'home' directory, as it displays
correctly in the rather verbose 'Config' section of the screen dump:
home => '/home/raj/www/apps/MyApp',
and directly under that is root/lib and root/src. I REALLY need to fix
this one or I'm sunk!

What debugging did you do? Did you dump the INCLUDE_PATH?
Template::Provider also has some dubbing available. Did you enable
that? Have you tried making a local copy of Template::Provider in
your lib directory and throw in some warn statements?

In MyApp::View::TT:
MyApp::Debug::DEBUG( __PACKAGE__->config->{INCLUDE_PATH} ):

$VAR1 = [
bless( {
'file_spec_class' => undef,
'volume' => '',
'dirs' => [
'',
'home',
'raj',
'www',
'apps',
'MyApp',
'root',
'lib'
]
}, 'Path::Class::Dir' ),
bless( {
'file_spec_class' => undef,
'volume' => '',
'dirs' => [
'',
'home',
'raj',
'www',
'apps',
'MyApp',
'root',
'templates'
]
}, 'Path::Class::Dir' )
];

This is correct - I moved the templates dir underneath MyApp/root.
No, I wasn't aware of it's existence! Even after reading the docs it's
not clear (to me) how to use the $provider object within Catalyst to get
the template path, or why this is any better than using the INCLUDE_PATH
from MyApp::View::TT

This is getting weirder - if I try to load a page normally available
only after login, I get another path error in addition to the template
error:
Form (search): Can't find form config search.fb in:
/home/raj/www/apps/MyApp/root/forms, yet search.fb is most definitely
present in /home/raj/www/apps/MyApp/root/forms. All root sub-dir files
set to 0644 permissions, with user/group set to same as other web files.
What gives?

The directory needs to be 755.

Do you know about the secret -m option to perldoc? -m is what give
the real manual.

perldoc -m Template::Provider and page down until you something handy:

# _template_content($path)
#
# Fetches content pointed to by $path.

Then you can do:[1]

warn "Hey, TT is looking for [$path]\n";


which might give you a lead.


[1]

$ cat ~/bin/mvim
#!/bin/sh
sudo vim `perldoc -l "$1"`