I suspect that I may have found the root cause, at least it is 'kind of' working now that I have made the following change:

        [ qr/$rootpassword/ => sub { shift->send("$password\n");} ],
[download]

Changed to:

        [ qr/$rootpassword/ => sub { shift->send("$rootpassword\n");} 
+],
[download]

So it may have in fact been the wrong password