PERL5LIB environment variable inaccessible for perlscript launched from website - php

Question

I'm trying to launch a perl script from within a PHP-based website. In that perl script, I'm using a package, that's installed on a non-standard location. So, to make all packages on that location available without launching perl as "perl -I /path/to/packages", or placing "lib /path/to/packages;" in every perl script I make, I added "/path/to/packages" to the PERL5LIB environmental system variable, and everything works fine when a regular user executes the script. However, when this perl-script is launched from the website, all environmental system variables seem to be inaccessible (tested with $ENV{"PERL5LIB"} and $ENV{"LOGNAME"} in perl, both are uninitialized), causing the perl script to crash because it can't find the required packages in #INC.
How can I make those perl packages available for launch from the website without lauching every perl script with "perl -I /path/to/packages script.pl" and without putting "lib /path/to/packages;" on top of every perl script?

Answer 1

There is two possible way to solve it:
If you own/access the web server, you could add variables globally.
(for apache)
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=844715
<Directory /var/www/>
SetEnv PERL5LIB /your/lib/path
Another workaround that you could setup and maintain your libraries related to script then reach it from your perl script. Please check out FindBin module for this. http://www.perl.com/pub/2002/05/14/mod_perl.html
You could store your script ./bin/, and your libs at ./lib/
If you are using your libs more than one place, you could link it to ./lib/.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use FindBin ();
use lib "$FindBin::Bin../lib/";
use test;
print "test.pm => $INC{'test.pm'}\n";

Answer 2

You have to insure that PER5LIB is set in the environment that your web server launches from.
You'll need to consult the manual for your particular web server to find the configuration command that set environment variables, or you'll need to modify the launcher script (e.g. apachectl) an add the logic to properly set PERL5LIB.
aaaaannnd... somebody was posting examples at the same time I was posting this...

Answer 3

I asked the system admin for help and found out that we're not using apache (as expected) but nginx. That being said, the solution was to add the PERL5LIB definition to the /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params file like this:
sudo echo 'fastcgi_param PERL5LIB "custom/path/to/perl/modules";' >> /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params
sudo service nginx reload
Thank you #LenJaffe and #user1126070 for pointing me in the right direction!