CPAN.pm should try passive-mode FTP (without the user having to set an environment variable) and should have at least one HTTP mirror address to try built in.

Modern computers are very often behind firewalls and defaulting to only trying non-passive FTP means that CPAN.pm just doesn't work for a large number of casual users.

Did you try another mirror site?

We would have an easier time diagnosing your problem if you posted a transcript of one of your CPAN.pm sessions. You've mostly likely not configured it correctly for your network situation.

If you're network is very, very restrictive, you can set up a minicpan (using CPAN::Mini even) and install modules from a server on your internal network (or even from a CD).

I have had a similar problem. It's due to the somewhat broken File Transfer Protocol. If you set the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE to 1 and then run cpan things should work better for you. In the bash shell this looks like:


export FTP_PASSIVE=1
perl -MCPAN -e shell
[download]

In bash and zsh (and probably most other shells), you can also set the environment variable on a per-process basis like this:

$ FTP_PASSIVE=1 perl -MCPAN -e shell
[download]

CPAN.pm is a very important tool, and really need to be fixed, or maybe rewrited! The dependencies bug at CPAN-Testers is still a big problem and no one is doing something to fix it!

Who has CPAN working think that it's perfect, and it is. But is very common to not be able to configure easy the CPAN, specially due the FTP problem, and some modules CPAN is just not able to find the distribution.

I've found that CPAN.pm, like much else, is far easier to configure and use if you RTFM. The CPAN.pm system is not broken -- it does exactly what you ask it to. It merely assumes that you know something about your network configuration, or at least are aware that any automated-transfer system is served best by having several mirrors in different locations and using disparate protocols.

You might also try reading up on the CPAN mirror list to determine which mirrors are best.

In short, the FTP problem isn't a "problem" with CPAN -- you merely need to instruct CPAN.pm to use Passive Mode. And the dependencies issues are usually the fault of either (a)the package maintainer, or (b)the mirror. Niether of those are solvable by the CPAN.pm authors.

As regards your claim that CPAN.pm needs to be fixed or rewritten, if you really believe that you should stop griping about it and do it yourself. The thing is open-source, after all, and the module maintainers would probably love it if you submitted a patch that made genuine improvements. Yelling at volunteers who have written a module to make your life easier simply because you can't get it to work is unbelievably immature.

Anima Legato
.oO all things connect through the motion of the mind

All of this configurations could be automatic! What I say is that it can be better, and the bugs that I have pointed doesn't exists in all OS and networks, but they are there and need to be fixed!

Graciliano M. P.
"Creativity is the expression of liberty".