[Perlplusplugin-developers] Re: ppl-plug-0.95

[<fh...@bi...>]

Dmitry,
I'm forwarding a copy of this to Slaven Rezic, who, I believe, has succeeded
at making the plugin work on a Freebsd machine.  I don't have one, so I'm
going to have to guess at what the problem is.  I'm also forwarding this
to a couple of mailing lists to see if anyone else has any clues.  I have
used the plugin successfully with Netscape 4.7, but only on Linux and 
Solaris.

A magic number is a value stored at the very beginning of a file on *nix
systems to identify the type of file.  For instance, when I do an 
'od -c perlplusplugin.so' the first characters in the output are '177ELF'
on both my RH 6.2 Linux and my Solaris 2.5.1 systems.  This is the magic
number for ELF format binaries which both these systems use.  It was placed
there by the linker when it created the file.  

There is probably a file somewhere on your system that lists all the various
magic numbers.  On Solaris, it's /etc/magic; on RH 6.2, it's /usr/share/magic.
If you do a 'man magic', it will probably point you to the file on yours.

Once you have the magic number, you might try comparing it with other .so
files on your system, especially some Netscape plugins if you have them.
If it's different, then the source of the problem is most likely in your
compiler/linker.  Check the options you use and perhaps check for patches or
newer versions.  If it appears to be the same, then perhaps the problem is
with the Netscape.  A different version might help.

Also, check the size of the .so.  On both my systems, it's on the order of
20k bytes or so.  If yours isn't somewhere near that, perhaps the compiler
or linker terminated too soon.  Maybe just rebuilding will fix it.

Let me know how you fare with this, especially if changes to the make file
will help.  I'll incorporate them into future releases.

Frank Holtry

 
On Aug 25, 11:52am, Dmitry Karasik wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I found your package,  ppl-plug-0.95, and I'm trying to adjust it to my
> own needs...
> I couldn't say that 'make' was flawless, the INCLUDE string somewhy
> didn't point
> to /usr/X11R6, but that's minor things. After 'make install'
> I got stumbled in the first steps - my Netscape says:
> 
> --------
> ERROR: bad magic number in
> "/home/dk/.netscape/plugins/perlplusplugin.so"
> Cant load plugin /home/dk/.netscape/plugins/perlplusplugin.so. Ignored.
> ---------
> 
> I didn't find anything similar into the documentation, and I didn't find
> anything on the web.
> The Netscape is 4.73, running on freebsd-4.1-stable. That is strange,
> because
> I even tried things on win32, and everything worked fine. I'm not
> experienced in writing
> netscape plugins, so I'm clueless about 'magic number' - whether it's
> something internal or
> related to system-dependent executable format.
> 
> Please let me know, if you can help me.
> Sincerely,
>   Dmitry Karasik
> 
> (www.prima.eu.org)
> 
>-- End of excerpt from Dmitry Karasik



-- 
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| Frank Holtry      | "If you have the right attitude, interesting       |
| fh...@av... |  problems will find you."                          |
|                   |                            Eric S. Raymond         |
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