From pjf at perltraining.com.au Tue Jun 1 20:43:42 2004 From: pjf at perltraining.com.au (Paul Fenwick) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Meeting next Wednesday, 9th June Message-ID: <40BD30CE.5050607@perltraining.com.au> G'day everyone, The next Melbourne.PM meeting shall be on the 9th June, next Wednesday: When: 6:30pm, 9th June Where: MyInternet House Blackwood St North Melbourne Talks: Yet Another Perl Conference / Open Source Development Conference. ----------------------------------------------------------------- YAPC is expanding to take over the world -- well, Australian open source, anyway. Hear more about how the conference is proceeding, how you can get involved, and have an opportunity for questions-and-answers with the organisers. Visit www.osdc.com.au for more information on the conference. Unix Privilege Manipulation in Perl -- Paul Fenwick ----------------------------------------------------- Perl has traditionally had a concept of real and effective user-ids, which are accessible via the special variables $< and $>. However, Perl has never had a concept of the third commonly seen privilege, the 'saved user-id'. Paul will briefly explore the treacherous maze of unix privileges, how they can vary both between and within operating systems, and how often when you think you've dropped privileges, you haven't. We will also explore some of the dark ways in which Perl can become misguided, and can be made to lie about the privileges it currently has available. Finally, we will learn of a new way of manipulating privileges in Perl, and how this overcomes a number of existing problems. Cheers, Paul -- Paul Fenwick | http://perltraining.com.au/ Director of Training | Ph: +61 3 9354 6001 Perl Training Australia | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681 From jarich at perltraining.com.au Wed Jun 9 00:23:34 2004 From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Tonight's meeting Message-ID: This is a reminder that there is a meeting on tonight, in North Melbourne (as usual) starting at 6:30pm. Paul's going to talk about Proc::UID, I'm going to enthuse to you all about the OSDC Call for papers and Scott will probably say something as well. Hopefully there's another speaker or two, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. Afterwards we'll wander over to the pub (hopefully early enough this time to be fed). Don't forget that this is the LAST Perl Mongers meetings before the OSDC paper proposals are due. That means that if you have any questions, tonight's a really good night to ask them! all the best, Jacinta -- ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia | (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001 | _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | contact@perltraining.com.au | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au | From pjf at perltraining.com.au Wed Jun 9 09:51:08 2004 From: pjf at perltraining.com.au (Paul Fenwick) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Call for testing - Proc::UID 0.03 Message-ID: <40C723DC.3030206@perltraining.com.au> G'day everyone, Those of you who attended yesterday's meeting will know that I'm looking for testers for Proc::UID. If you're running a non-Linux 2.4.x, Unix flavoured operating system, then I'm very interested in getting test results from you. Especially if you have root on your system, as that allows a greater number of tests to run. Testing and giving me feedback is simple. Just scoot over to CPAN: http://search.cpan.org/~pjf/Proc-UID-0.03/ Download the file, unpack, and run: ./sendtests from the distribution. This will make, test, prepare an e-mail, and ask you for confirmation to send it. If for any reason it doesn't work, then I'd love you to send me the results of: perl -V perl Makefile.PL make make test to me at . If you're lazy, you can run './sendtests -y' and it will do everything *and* send the mail without any interaction required whatsoever. If your system doesn't get past the 'make' stage, then I'm especially interested in hearing from you. Please send me the results of the steps above. Besides from warm fuzzys, you'll also make ensure that Proc::UID runs correctly on your operating system. Many thanks, Paul -- Paul Fenwick | http://perltraining.com.au/ Director of Training | Ph: +61 3 9354 6001 Perl Training Australia | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681 From jarich at perltraining.com.au Wed Jun 9 20:11:29 2004 From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Suggestions for sending out the CFP Message-ID: G'day folks, Someone suggested sending the cfp info to Melbourne Wireless (which I think is a great idea) and we encouraged you all to think up other groups as well. If you could be so good as to send us an email about the groups you contact (just so that no one group is bombarded with cfps from Melb PM) that would be great. The way I see it is that if 70-80% of people are getting 2 invites to submit papers then we're sending the invite to the right number of places. If most peopleare only seeing one invite then we could be missing too many other good people. :) For your information, so far we have contacted the following places: Perl Mongers: ------------- Melbourne-pm Canberra-pm Central-coast-pm Perth-pm Sydney-pm Brisbane-pm Jakarta-pm Auckland-pm New-zealand-pm Wellington-pm Hawkesbay Other languages --------------- Python-AU phpMelb OzZope python.org Linux and Unix User groups: --------------------------- AUUG NetBSD Australian regional mailing list LUV Luv Programmers SIG Victorian FreeBSD Users Group MLUG LinuxSA BSD Users Group of Adelaide SLUG (Sydney) CLUG (Canberra) TasLUG PLUG (Perth) HUMBUG (Brisbane) DarLUG (Darwin) General interest groups ----------------------- LinuxChix Melbourne LinuxChix Sydney LinuxChix Announce Advocacy groups --------------- OSIA Press release sites ------------------- Linux PR site use.perl.org linuxtoday.com News groups ----------- * aus.comp.linux * comp.lang.perl.announce * comp.lang.python.announce * comp.lang.ruby * comp.lang.tcl * comp.graphics.apps.gimp -- ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia | (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001 | _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | contact@perltraining.com.au | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au | From jarich at perltraining.com.au Thu Jun 17 04:35:00 2004 From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Submit your OSDC talk proposals. Message-ID: G'day folks, If you're intending to talk at OSDC later this year; now is a really good time to submit your talk proposal. Don't leave it to the last minute! It should only take you about 10 minutes to write your proposal, although you're welcome to go into great detail and take longer if you really want. Information on what we want in a talk proposal can be found at: http://www.osdc.com.au/papers/call_for_papers.html Currently we have the following tallies: Perl - 5 speakers, 285 minutes, 8 talks. Python - 5 speakers, 202 minutes, 6 talks. Php - 1 speaker, 155 minues, 4 talks Other - 3 speakers, 135 minutes, 3 talks. This gives us 777 minutes out of our desired 1890 minutes of presentations (not including keynotes). So we're slightly less than half way there. If you don't think you have anything very interesting to say please think again. Has an open source product saved your business? Have you used a Perl module in a way it wasn't meant to be used and achieved wonders? Do you have a favourite module that noone else seems to have heard about? Do you have a favourite module that everyone seems to have heard about yet noone seems to use? Have you used/Do you use any of the B:: modules in an interesting way? If not Perl, how about Php or Python, or some other open source tool or technology? We've even got a talk proposal on AI maze solving. Think hard then submit a proposal or three and we'll have a fantastic conference. All the very best, and looking forward to getting your proposals, Jacinta Richardson -- ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia | (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001 | _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | contact@perltraining.com.au | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au | From scottp at dd.com.au Sun Jun 20 17:33:38 2004 From: scottp at dd.com.au (Scott Penrose) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] PERL Destruction and Memory Usage Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Ddues I have a quick question which I can't easily answer or prove either way. I have a very large data structure in an application. Close to 100MB. All made up of objects. I then fork a number of times, and the used memory does not increase as it is still sharing that memory (standard vfork = copy on write). Over the life time of the child the object does not increase much. Then I do a "exit 0;" This tends to take a very long time. Perl then calls DESTROY on every single object in memory. So the problem... I have a theory that during the DESTROY that perl writes to the memory block, and I end up taking up the 100MB extra for each child being destroyed. Thus enough of these happen at once swap is hit and everything slows down. Also, does perl do garbage collection during an exit ? Two questions: * Is this the case, or does perl leave those blocks alone on DESTROY? * Is there an easy "correct" way to exit a child without activating the DESTROY or Garbage collection? Scott - -- * - * http://www.osdc.com.au - Open Source Developers Conference * - * Scott Penrose Welcome to the Digital Dimension http://www.dd.com.au/ scottp@dd.com.au Dismaimer: Contents of this mail and signature are bound to change randomly. Whilst every attempt has been made to control said randomness, the author wishes to remain blameless for the number of eggs that damn chicken laid. Oh and I don't want to hear about butterflies either. Please do not send me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) iD8DBQFA1hDFDCFCcmAm26YRAo0XAJ4wnPhoTSPxGKQ/Al3+7lrVdYtlZwCggRmG cIvipwzUlN5Y6sh9Joukc2g= =tpDV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From list at bereft.net Sun Jun 20 19:00:44 2004 From: list at bereft.net (Brad Bowman) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] PERL Destruction and Memory Usage In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1087776044.691.3.camel@oxum> $ perldoc -f exit The exit() function does not always exit immediately. It calls any defined "END" routines first, but these "END" routines may not themselves abort the exit. Likewise any object destructors that need to be called are called before the real exit. If this is a problem, you can call "POSIX:_exit($status)" to avoid END and destructor processing. See perlmod for details. On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 08:33, Scott Penrose wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi Ddues > > I have a quick question which I can't easily answer or prove either way. > > I have a very large data structure in an application. Close to 100MB. > All made up of objects. I then fork a number of times, and the used > memory does not increase as it is still sharing that memory (standard > vfork = copy on write). > > Over the life time of the child the object does not increase much. > > Then I do a "exit 0;" > > This tends to take a very long time. Perl then calls DESTROY on every > single object in memory. > > So the problem... I have a theory that during the DESTROY that perl > writes to the memory block, and I end up taking up the 100MB extra for > each child being destroyed. Thus enough of these happen at once swap is > hit and everything slows down. > > Also, does perl do garbage collection during an exit ? > > Two questions: > > * Is this the case, or does perl leave those blocks alone on DESTROY? > * Is there an easy "correct" way to exit a child without activating the > DESTROY or Garbage collection? > > Scott > - -- > * - * http://www.osdc.com.au - Open Source Developers Conference * - * > Scott Penrose > Welcome to the Digital Dimension > http://www.dd.com.au/ > scottp@dd.com.au > > Dismaimer: Contents of this mail and signature are bound to change > randomly. Whilst every attempt has been made to control said > randomness, the author wishes to remain blameless for the number of > eggs that damn chicken laid. Oh and I don't want to hear about > butterflies either. > > Please do not send me Word or PowerPoint attachments. > See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) > > iD8DBQFA1hDFDCFCcmAm26YRAo0XAJ4wnPhoTSPxGKQ/Al3+7lrVdYtlZwCggRmG > cIvipwzUlN5Y6sh9Joukc2g= > =tpDV > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > _______________________________________________ > Melbourne-pm mailing list > Melbourne-pm@pm.org > http://www.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/melbourne-pm -- You cannot tell whether a person is good or bad by his vicissitudes in life. Good and bad fortune are matters of fate. Good and bad actions are Man's Way. Retribution of good and evil is taught simply as a moral lesson. -- Hagakure http://bereft.net/hagakure/ From scottp at dd.com.au Tue Jun 22 03:07:41 2004 From: scottp at dd.com.au (Scott Penrose) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Remove use warnings; use strict; in production ? Message-ID: <3BC125DA-C423-11D8-B65C-000D93ADDF32@dd.com.au> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I recently read the following in a new bit of perl development: "You will want to remove 'use strict' and 'use warnings' after you are finished testing to eliminate their overhead in production." Is it true that it adds overhead ? I thought it altered behaviour only ? Scott - -- * - * http://www.osdc.com.au - Open Source Developers Conference * - * Scott Penrose Open source developer http://linux.dd.com.au/ scottp@dd.com.au Dismaimer: Open sauce usually ends up never coming out (of the bottle). Please do not send me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) iD8DBQFA1+jPDCFCcmAm26YRAkv0AKCQ14IWqdmw0lFPmPObiAqxy6aG2ACgk0bU F5WsUQOHi/vLysNfRJO70y4= =JQiF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From pjf at perltraining.com.au Tue Jun 22 03:23:00 2004 From: pjf at perltraining.com.au (Paul Fenwick) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Remove use warnings; use strict; in production ? In-Reply-To: <3BC125DA-C423-11D8-B65C-000D93ADDF32@dd.com.au> References: <3BC125DA-C423-11D8-B65C-000D93ADDF32@dd.com.au> Message-ID: <40D7EC64.9070208@perltraining.com.au> G'day Scotty / All, Scott Penrose wrote: > I recently read the following in a new bit of perl development: > > "You will want to remove 'use strict' and 'use warnings' after you are > finished testing to eliminate their overhead in production." > > Is it true that it adds overhead ? I thought it altered behaviour only ? 'use diagnostics' definitely adds overhead, and should be removed for production. It parses the perldiag file upon program start-up. The effect of 'use strict' is only to make tweaks to $^H and set (or unset) a number of flags. These are compile-time hints to the Perl interpreter. Once Perl is actually running, these hints have no effect. (Unless you try compile more code with string eval). Likewise, 'use warnings' modifies the special variable ${^WARNING_BITS}. My understanding is that this bitmask is checked whenever a warning would be generated by Perl. Indeed, if you use warnings then you're likely to fix code that may invoke the warning mechanism, which I expect would result in faster code. :) You will definitely experience some overhead if your code is generating lots of warnings, but in that instance the code should be fixed, or a specific 'no warnings' used for the desired block of code. Cheerio, Paul -- Paul Fenwick | http://perltraining.com.au/ Director of Training | Ph: +61 3 9354 6001 Perl Training Australia | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681 From alfiejohn at acm.org Thu Jun 24 22:31:35 2004 From: alfiejohn at acm.org (Alfie John) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] CGI.pm bug In-Reply-To: <3BC125DA-C423-11D8-B65C-000D93ADDF32@dd.com.au> References: <3BC125DA-C423-11D8-B65C-000D93ADDF32@dd.com.au> Message-ID: <1088134295.2244.12.camel@localhost> Hi all, With CGI-3.05, the documentation states that url_param() should be used in the "same way" as param(). However without arguments, the returned list is NOT sorted unlike param(). Sorry for sending my patch to this mailing list, but I have had no luck in getting any response from the author, and considered this might be a good place to send it just in case other people might be staring at their code hours on end wondering why its not working! int 20h; Alfie John -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CGI-3.05.patch Type: text/x-patch Size: 274 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/melbourne-pm/attachments/20040624/992b2771/CGI-3.05.bin From jarich at perltraining.com.au Sun Jun 27 20:35:34 2004 From: jarich at perltraining.com.au (Jacinta Richardson) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:32:21 2004 Subject: [Melbourne-pm] Letting you in on the good news Message-ID: G'day folks, As you'll be aware the paper proposals for OSDC are due today. I thought you might like to know how the tally is going. For Perl we have 13 speakers for 24 talks. Speakers include Damian Conway, Nathan Torkington, Abigail (as in Abigail and Abigail-II from PerlMonks) and Baden Hughes (the representative of the Perl Foundation in Australia). We also have appear to have a submission from the French Polynesia University in Tahiti. For Python we have 5 speakers for 7 talks. Speakers include Richard Jones and Anthony Baxter who are both very important in Python. For Php we have 2 speakers for 6 talks. Although the subject of one talk (WebDB) need not be implemented in Php. For other technologies we have 6 speakers for 7 talks. Speakers include Con Zymaris (the CEO of Cybersource) and Jenn Vesperman (author of the O'Reilly CVS book and many O'Reilly articles). So, so far Perl will rule the conference (yay!) and we should have a great variety of talks to attend. It's not too late to add in your own proposal. Read the CFP (http://www.osdc.com.au/papers/call_for_papers.html) for details as to how. All the very best, Jacinta -- ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ | Jacinta Richardson | `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) | Perl Training Australia | (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' | +61 3 9354 6001 | _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' | contact@perltraining.com.au | (il),-'' (li),' ((!.-' | www.perltraining.com.au |