DBD::mysql object version 4.013 does not match bootstrap parameter 4.005

Question

The issue is with XServe running 10.6.2.
Out of the box Perl doesn't come with DBM::MySQL module installed. To be able to install it, I first had to download MySQL libraries (instructions and link to the file are here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4006 ).
After that I was able to install (manually with "make") the latest module DBD-mysql-4.013 which Perl now acknowledges. However, when module is called, following error is thrown:
"install_driver(mysql) failed: DBD::mysql object version 4.013 does not match bootstrap parameter 4.005 at /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level/DynaLoader.pm line 230.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 3) line 3."
Suspecting that Perl is looking for a 3-year old version 4.005, I did try removing 4.013 and installing 4.005 instead (as I couldn't find any other clear solution) but 4.005 failed to pass "make test" - not very surprisingly as it is that old - so I chose not to try installing it and put 4.013 back in and still got same error.
If somebody could kindly provide/direct me to clear instructions to resolve this problem your help will be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I didn't document right away what I did to get this resolved but this is what I remember. This is a hack, I found a suggestion online that lead me to this. However, a FAIR WARNING - this is dangerous for the system.
I went into the module file mysql.pm located here:
cd /Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level/DBD
vi mysql.pm
I commented out the line that specifies version of the file, 4.013, and put 4.005 line instead:
#$VERSION = '4.013';
$VERSION = '4.005';
If server is not rebooted, this doesn't change anything, error will still be thrown. So I rebooted the server from command line.
This reboot did not go well, server went into some kind of intermediate state, I lost web access. We had to do a hard reboot by cycling power physically on the server itself. After that server came back up, log was full of all kinds of errors. Now all of a sudden the error "object version 4.013 does not match bootstrap parameter 4.005" wasn't thrown anymore. Apparently, version of this module is not read from the module .pm file itself every time module is called, it is instead stored somewhere else and is looked up there, wherever "there" may be. I suspect one of the files used during boot got confused when version number didn't match and it caused chain reaction and a bad reboot.
Later on I went back into the file and changed version number back to 4.013 as it is supposed to be, and commented the other line out:
$VERSION = '4.013';
#$VERSION = '4.005';
MySQL on Perl functioned fine since then.
Server has been rebooted weeks later during 10.6.3 upgrade and this time it didn't cause any problems with the module. Still works.