heh, I'm running Red hat 8.0 Linux and all I wanted to do was install a Content management system (scoop) to create a website/log. I've been at it 3 days now :( , and appear to have made a right pigs ear of it (I fear I may have to trash my hard drive and start all over again pretty soon, I've got weird files/paths/permmisions all over the place). I was not intending to end up in the corridors of this Monastery at all.
OK then, a couple of questions concerning your advice
1. When you say "Try doing the manual installation, when you get the necessary archives." do you mean Perl or CPAN?
2. What is the proper place to unpack the archive when I've got it?
I think a lot of my previous problems are down to not unarchiving in the right place.