The only thing that comes to mind is a bad NFS volume causing a hang. /:

Personally, I'd use the Perl debugger to watch what is taking so long. You could, for example, do:

perl -d Makefile.PL
  DB<1> t
Trace = on
  DB<2> c
[download]

and then stand back and mostly ignore the tons of output until it stops or seems to be "repeating" and see if the displayed Perl code is helpful.

If you are lucky, you can hit CTRL-C and get the debugger prompt back and investigate further. If that works, then try the above without doing the "t" command and just wait what seems like a long time before hitting CTRL-C.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")