A common cause of problems when installing Meister or Mojo is the prerequisites necessary for a successful install. Both Perl
and Java are required. Often, Meister customers run into a problem with either or both of these prerequisites when installing. More often than not, they do not have one or both of them installed on their machine, or they have an unsupported version.

However, even if you have the correct versions of Perl and Java installed, you might run into Perl or Java validation errors when you install Meister. The most common cause of these errors is conflicts with Oracle products. Oracle ships with its own version of Perl, which has been optimized to work with the Oracle database. When Oracle is installed, it modifies two environment variables: the PATH variable, and the PERL5LIB variable.

When Meister performs its Perl validation routines during installation, it recognizes the Perl version that Oracle has placed in the PATH. This is where the first conflict arises. Meister validates the Perl installation by running a `perl -v` command, and checking against the output of that command. Oracle’s version of Perl returns an unexpected version number string, and does not pass validation (this is by design, since Oracle’s version of Perl will not work with Meister’s Perl libraries.)

In order to pass Perl validation, then, you will need to modify the PATH variable so that the Oracle’s “bin” directory is no longer in the PATH.

Once you have cleared out references to Oracle Perl from your PATH, you will still run into one more error: Meister installation will hang if the PERL5LIB variable is definied. You will need to remove the PERL5LIB variable when you install Meister.

Openmake Support’s recommendation is to initialize a Meister install from a shell prompt. From inside the shell, modify the PATH variable to remove Oracle’s bin directory (where their perl.exe is installed), and unset the PERL5LIB. Once you have modified the environment, you can run the install of Meister. After Meister installed, you will be able to start it from your normal environment (including Oracle’s environment settings.)