As you know I had some problems with CPAN installing on a high version SuSE Box (7.1) as well. I do believe it HAS something to do with the distro. Not sure what though. Something like not or impropper installed libraries and so fort...
I did find a solution...
After you tried an install with CPAN which failed, just take it of from the shell, and patch the makefile at your likings... ( bad thing! :-( )
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