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PGTS Humble BlogThread: Perl Programming |
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Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger |
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Problems With YAML |
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Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:11:00 +1100Recently I tried running cpan on an Ubuntu workstation. |
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Whenever I tried to download a module I got the following error:
CPAN: YAML loaded ok (v0.66) Alert: While trying to 'parse' YAML file '/root/.cpan/FTPstats.yml' with 'YAML' the following error was encountered: YAML Error: Invalid element in map Code: YAML_LOAD_ERR_BAD_MAP_ELEMENT Line: 3 Document: 1 at /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/YAML.pm line 33 |
I tried reloading cpan, but when cpan tried to fetch the CPAN module the same error occurred.
Next I tried looking at the YAML code. This didn't really tell me much.
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sub Load { my $yaml = YAML->new; $yaml->loader_class($YAML::LoaderClass) if $YAML::LoaderClass; return $yaml->loader_object->load(@_); # <-- Error occured here } |
I tried looking at the file in /root/.cpan/FTPstats.yml, but that made even less sense to me.
The apocryphal tale about YAML is that it was renamed from Yet Another Markup Language to the more geeky YAML Ain't no Markup Language (could your humble blogger suggest: Yet Another recursive acronyM Laddie). Well, I certainly ain't no expert on YAML, and frankly I have no wish to become one. YAML is often used to maintain configuration data, and AFAIK its raison d'etre is parsing lists. It may be inextricably embroiled with the CPAN configuration file, which is called Config.pm on most perl distributions. In Ubuntu the system wide config file is kept in this location:
/etc/perl/CPAN/Config.pm
You will need to be an administrator to edit this file. If you don't feel comfortable about editing it (and in my humble opinion you would have to be either a perl guts guru or a bit crazy to try it) then you can edit the files with your favourite editor. I would suggest removing the config files and config folder file. I used the following code:
sudo -i mv /etc/perl/CPAN/Config.pm /etc/perl/CPAN/Config.pm.old mv /root/.cpan /root/.cpan.old |
This enables you to keep an old copy of the config file, and any old data in the .cpan folder (just in case they contained something valuable). Now, if you run CPAN again you will be lead through the configuration dialogue. If you have a copy of Config.pm (e.g. from another Ubuntu workstation in the same local network), you can copy it to the /etc/perl/CPAN On the other hand if you know what the problem is you can edit the files with vi or emacs and make the appropriate changes (but as already stated, you really MUST know what you are doing if you edit these files).
In my case I found that getting rid of both the Config.pm and .cpan folder fixed the problem. After CPAN had been re-configured everything worked ok.
You might want to try entering these two commands:
install Bundle::CPAN reload cpan
Note: If you are a Windows user (you shouldn't even be reading this), you would be ill-advised to do this -- I suggest you try removing Activestate perl, reinstalling it and rebooting your machine (and maybe consider getting a decent operating system for your computing environment).
Note: (Unix users) If everything works ok -- DON'T FORGET to enter this command:
o conf commitBEFORE you quit (unless of course you set the autocommit option as part of the configuration dialogue).