I'm not sure that using a non absolute path as in

INSTALLDIRS=sun4-solaris 

is right.

In any case, I've had good luck with

perl Makefile.PL LIB=/home/me/lib

, so I think

perl Makefile.PL LIB=/apps/midb/perl_5.005/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/sun4-solaris

might do the trick.

update: re-read your post, particularly "The system I inherited has Perl (version 5.00503) installed in a non-standard location,. If perl was made and installed properly in the non-standard location, it should contain the paths, and you should be able to do the classic install with no additional parms to the "perl Makefile.PL".

--Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com

All code given here is UNTESTED unless otherwise stated.