The installation script for vSphere SDK for Perl is supported on the Linux distributions that are listed in the Release Notes.

The installation proceeds as follows.

  1. The installer checks whether the following required prerequisite software are installed on the system.
    Perl Perl version 5.8.8 or version 5.10 must be installed on your system.
    OpenSSL

    The vSphere SDK for Perl requires SSL because most connections between the system on which you run the command and the target vSphere system are encrypted with SSL.

    The OpenSSL library (libssl-devel package) is not included in the default Linux distribution. See Installing Prerequisite Software for Linux Systems.

    LibXML2

    Used for XML parsing. The vSphere SDK for Perl requires 2.9.6 or later.

    The libxml2 package is not included in the default Linux distribution. See Installing Prerequisite Software for Linux Systems.

    uuid Included in uuid-devel for SLES 11 and in e2fsprogs-devel for other Linux platforms. Required by the UUID Perl module.
  2. If the required software is found, the installer proceeds. Otherwise, the installer stops and informs you that you must install the software. See Installing Prerequisite Software for Linux Systems for instructions.
  3. The installer checks whether the following Perl modules are found, and whether the correct version is installed.
    • Crypt-SSLeay-0.72
    • IO-Compress-Zlib-2.037
    • Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.037
    • Archive-Zip-1.28
    • Data-Dumper-2.121
    • XML-LibXML-2.0129
    • libwww-perl-6.15
    • LWP-Protocol-https-6.07
    • XML-LibXML-Common2.0129
    • XML-NamespaceSupport-1.12
    • XML-SAX-0.99
    • UUID-0.27
    • SOAP-Lite-0.710.08
    • HTML-Parser-3.60
    • version-0.78
    • MIME-Base64-3.14
    • Socket6-023
    • IO-Socket-INET6-2.71
    • Net-INET6Glue-0.600_1
    • Net-HTTP-6.10

    Earlier versions of libwww-perl include the LWP-Protocol-https module. More recent versions of libwww-perl do not include the LWP-Protocol-https module and you must install that module.

    Note: If you intend to use vSphere SDK for Perl with SSL certification, verify that LWP::UserAgent 6.00 or later is installed. The installer does not check this module, and earlier versions do not work with SSL.
  4. The installer proceeds depending on whether the Perl modules are found.
    • If a recommended Perl module is not found at all, the installer installs it using CPAN. You must meet the installation prerequisites or the installer cannot install the Perl modules and stops. See Installing and Uninstalling vSphere SDK for Perl on Linux Systems.
    • If an earlier version of a recommended module is found, the installer does not install a different version from CPAN and proceeds with the installation. After completing the installation, the installer displays a message that the version on the system does not match the recommended version, and recommends that you install the version vSphere SDK for Perl was tested with. You can install the modules by using the package installer for your platform, the installation CD, or CPAN.
    • If a later version of a recommended module is found, the installer proceeds with the installation and does not display a message after the installation.
    Note: The installer does not overwrite existing versions of recommended Perl modules. You must update those modules manually.
  5. After all required software and all prerequisite Perl modules are installed, you can install vSphere SDK for Perl. See Installing Prerequisite Software for Linux Systems.

If a previous version of vSphere SDK for Perl is installed on your system, and you install vSphere SDK for Perl in a different directory, you must reset the PATH environment variable. You can reset the variable, before or after the installation, by using the command appropriate for your distribution and shell, for example setenv or export. If you do not reset the path, the system might still look for executable files in the old location.