CPAN Lock File Issue

doubleqq has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks, I am trying to resolve an issue with CPAN. I have to do local installs since i do not have root acces on this particular machine. I used to be able to run CPAN without issue, however recently I encountered an issue when I try to run CPAN.

$ cpan
CPAN.pm panic Found Invalid lockfile '~/.cpan/.lock" please remove. Ca
+nnot proceed
[download]

removing the file I try cpan again

$cpan
Terminal does not support AddHistory
CPAN: Time::HiRes loaded ok (v1.9726)
Could not lock lockfile with flock: No such file or directory; retryin
+g
[download]

When I try to install a module from the command line I get

$ cpan -i Array::Utils
....some loading messages...
Waiting for a read lock on '/~/.cpan/FTPstats.yml'
[download]

Any thoughts as to what my issue might be? I tried changing the permissions for both the .lock file and the YAML file, but no luck. If it helps I am on a Fedora Unix system. The admin unfortunately does not have any immediate ideas. But any tips on troubleshooting this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all for any insight

Comment on CPAN Lock File Issue Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: CPAN Lock File Issue by Anonymous Monk on Sep 13, 2014 at 07:19 UTC
Its simple, this file does not exist `'/~/.cpan/FTPstats.yml'` Why is your version of cpan configured to look for that file? Its a mystery ... usually its "~/.cpan" which expands to /usr/home/username/.cpan ... try configuring/specifying an absolute path Go fish :)	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: CPAN Lock File Issue by doubleqq (Acolyte) on Sep 15, 2014 at 19:01 UTC
Thank you for weighing in, though it is odd. It creates an empty file for FTPstats.yml. I can delete the file and it will create it again. Not sure what should be contained in that file, but it's there under ~/.cpan/	[reply]