in reply to Frustrations with CPAN module installation

The line:

ftp: local: Digest-MD5-2.30.tar.gz: Permission denied

indicates that the directory on your local machine where you are trying to download to is not writable by the user running the cpan process. Figure out where this is, and make it writable to everyone like this: chmod a+w <dirname>

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Nothing is too wonderful to be true
-- Michael Faraday