Item860: extender.pl fails with null argument when run from configure

Installing extensions from configure fails on some systems.

Error: Installer returned errors:

Bad parameter  at /var/www/foswiki100/tools/extender.pl line 1013.
 at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/CGI/Carp.pm line 356

The bad parameter appears to be a null argument which can be safely ignored. Debug code added to extender.pl reports:

SCALAR = 3 
ARGV[0] = -d 
ARGV[1] = -a 
ARGV[2] =  

The null ARGV[2] causes the error.

There probably should not be a null ARGV, but ignoring it here gets past the error. Will also try to track down the source of the null argument.

Complete traceback:

Bad parameter  at /var/www/foswiki100/tools/extender.pl line 1006.
 at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/CGI/Carp.pm line 356
	CGI::Carp::realdie('Bad parameter  at /var/www/foswiki100/tools/extender.pl line ...') called at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/CGI/Carp.pm line 437
	CGI::Carp::die('Bad parameter ') called at /var/www/foswiki100/tools/extender.pl line 1006
	Foswiki::Extender::install('http://foswiki.org/pub/Extensions', 'DirectedGraphPlugin', 'DirectedGraphPlugin', 'MANIFEST', 'data/System/DirectedGraphPlugin.txt,0644,Plugin topic\x{a}data/Sy...', 'DEPENDENCIES', 'Digest::MD5,>=0,1,cpan,May be required for lib/Foswiki/Plugin...') called at /var/www/foswiki100/DirectedGraphPlugin_installer line 141
	require /var/www/foswiki100/DirectedGraphPlugin_installer called at /var/www/foswiki100/lib/Foswiki/Configure/UIs/EXTEND.pm line 158
	eval {...} called at /var/www/foswiki100/lib/Foswiki/Configure/UIs/EXTEND.pm line 156
	Foswiki::Configure::UIs::EXTEND::ui('Foswiki::Configure::UIs::EXTEND=HASH(0xa1dc80c)') called at /var/www/foswiki100/bin/configure line 561
	Foswiki::_actionInstallExtension() called at /var/www/foswiki100/bin/configure line 454
 at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/CGI/Carp.pm line 356
	CGI::Carp::realdie('Bad parameter  at /var/www/foswiki100/tools/extender.pl line ...') called at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/CGI/Carp.pm line 437
	CGI::Carp::die('Bad parameter  at /var/www/foswiki100/tools/extender.pl line ...') called at /var/www/foswiki100/lib/Foswiki/Configure/UIs/EXTEND.pm line 160
	eval {...} called at /var/www/foswiki100/lib/Foswiki/Configure/UIs/EXTEND.pm line 156
	Foswiki::Configure::UIs::EXTEND::ui('Foswiki::Configure::UIs::EXTEND=HASH(0xa1dc80c)') called at /var/www/foswiki100/bin/configure line 561
	Foswiki::_actionInstallExtension() called at /var/www/foswiki100/bin/configure line 454

I've recreated this with a completely vanilla reinstall of Foswiki from the January 8th .tgz file. First plugin install failed with this error.

-- GeorgeClark

Can we close this now?

-- KennethLavrsen - 22 Apr 2009

Closed. I've not seen any more occurrences. Don't yet understand why this fix was needed, but it did clear up the problem I encountered.