perl compilation: 'Too many levels of symbolic links'-CodePudding

In Linux, installation of perl is failing while running make test command

t/op/exec ...................................................... # Failed test 17 - at op/exec.t line 114
# $! eq 40, 'Too many levels of symbolic links'
FAILED at test 17

Error is not indicating for which symbolic link it is failing.

Steps Followed:

- Download perl archive from https://www.cpan.org/src/ 

- [user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  tar -xvzf perl-5.28.3.tar.gz

- [user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  cd perl-5.28.3

- [user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  ./Configure -des -Dinstallprefix=<installation directory>

- [user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  make

- [user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  make test

Failed 2 tests out of 2464, 99.92% okay.
        ../cpan/Time-Local/t/Local.t
        op/exec.t
Elapsed: 1317 sec
u=12.87  s=34.02  cu=548.85  cs=488.76  scripts=2464  tests=1158447
make: *** [test] Error 1



[user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  t/TEST op/exec.t
t/op/exec ... # Failed test 17 - at op/exec.t line 114
# $! eq 40, 'Too many levels of symbolic links'
FAILED at test 17
Failed 1 test out of 1, 0.00% okay.
        op/exec.t

Verified same behavior is happening for other perl version also, this is indicating some issue with my installation environment.

Any pointer can be helpful.

CodePudding user response：

Thank you for the pointer @choroba.

Following was the root cause.

In <perl-5.28.3>/t/op/exec.t file, we find the following around line 114:

$rc = system { "lskdfj" } "lskdfj";
unless( ok($rc == 255 << 8 or $rc == -1 or $rc == 256 or $rc == 512) ) {
    print "# \$rc == $rc\n";
}

unless ( ok( $! == 2  or  $! =~ /\bno\b.*\bfile/i or  
             $! == 13 or  $! =~ /permission denied/i or
             $! == 22 or  $! =~ /invalid argument/i  ) ) {
    diag sprintf "\$! eq %d, '%s'\n", $!, $!;
}

In my environment PATH env variable value was

[user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$ echo $PATH
/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/dev_infra/platform/bin:/usr/dev_infra/generic/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/ade/bin

Within this PATH, for following paths ls attempt is throwing error 'Too many levels of symbolic links'

[user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$ ls -i  /usr/local/bin /usr/local/ade/bin
ls: cannot access /usr/local/bin: Too many levels of symbolic links
ls: cannot access /usr/local/ade/bin: Too many levels of symbolic links
    
[user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$ ls -ltr /usr/local
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Mar 30  2017 bin -> ./packages/local/bin
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   18 Mar 30  2017 ade -> /usr/local/nde/ade

After removing offending paths from PATH, make test is running successfully

[user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  export PATH=/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/dev_infra/platform/bin:/usr/dev_infra/generic/bin

[user@hostname perl-5.28.3]$  make test

All tests successful.
Elapsed: 1611 sec
u=14.47  s=44.63  cu=731.82  cs=575.84  scripts=2474  tests=1209537