I did try with both 1.47 and 1.48. I also did a fresh install of RH 7.3 with perl 5.6.1 and both 1.47 and 1.48 worked well (1.47 has installed well many, many times).
Unfortunately in theis "experiment" I changed 2 variables at the same time:
1) RH 7.3 -> RH 9.0
2) perl 5.6.1 to 5.8.0
Your results would indicate that perhaps RH 9.0 is not the problem. On your RH 9.0 do you have perl 5.8.0 or 5.6.1 ?