Perl fix found! - panic: top_env
 

And quite simple I might add

If you get: panic: top_env when running zone.exe with the embedded perl build, check your windows/system32 directory for perl58/perl56.dll or anything similar to it, delete it, and zone.exe will work again.

What's happening:
zone.exe requires perl.dll, which is quite often copied to your system32 directory. When it finds it in your system32 directory, it also looks for the perl libraries in the same place, which simply are not there.

Good show! Amazing that such a basic install flaw causes such an ugly reaction. Can't believe that Perl would see fit to bring down the entire eqemu process in any situation. The fact that it does so with an obscure and relatively undocumented error message is pathetic. At any rate, I'm glad you found the fix. Any idea why some ppl are getting dlls installed outside of their perl dirs while others are not?

As I recall, and its been a while since I installed it, there was an option to put it in system32 or not.

Some of us said no. :-)

if you do the normal automatic install of activeperl, it'll put it in that directory automatically, and for testing purposes, that's all that I used while trying to debug it, hence the problems.

I installed 5.8 and checked searched under windows and subdirs. No dll there, but I still get the panic, any ideas?

Check your eqemu directory as well for the dll, in worst case search your entire drive - you only want it to exist in one place, the perl/bin directory.

Add your perl/bin dir to the _beginning_ of your path.

Problem fixed... I have no idea what was wrong, I was 1/2 asleep when I fixed it :lol:

I got the same error on Linux. Installing IO::Scalar fixed it thankfully. I was pondering how exactly I was going to find the perl56.dll equivilant in Linux... :D

Regards,

krich

If you want to use the perl plugin (not needed for quests), you must install Scalar - to do this, you must have a compiler and basic experience, just use CPAN and do an install IO::Scalar

Zones disseapearing after running.
 

I check the entire drive and the only place perl*.dll files exist is under the perl\bin directory. I am running Windows 2k Adv Server. World.exe appears to load correctly. Any ideas?

As I (now) understand it, the precompiled exe's that were released with perl scripts also included the perl plugins which does require IO::scalers

Although I don't know if it is required... make sure you have rebooted after getting everything setup and installed. Hey never hurts!