thanx for the suggestions. I got as far as this now, after changing things as 1st suggested by Corion,

Fetching with LWP:
  http://mirrors.playboy.com/CPAN/authors/id/P/PM/PMQS/CHECKSUMS
'glob' trapped by operation mask at (eval 82) line 1.
 at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4266
        CPAN::Distribution::MD5_check_file('CPAN::Distribution=HASH(0x
+a77a4a0)', '/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/P/PM/PMQS/CHECKSUMS') call
+ed at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4247
        CPAN::Distribution::verifyMD5('CPAN::Distribution=HASH(0xa77a4
+a0)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 3895
        CPAN::Distribution::get('CPAN::Distribution=HASH(0xa77a4a0)') 
+called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4464
        CPAN::Distribution::make('CPAN::Distribution=HASH(0xa77a4a0)')
+ called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4704
        CPAN::Distribution::test('CPAN::Distribution=HASH(0xa77a4a0)')
+ called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4809
        CPAN::Distribution::install('CPAN::Distribution=HASH(0xa77a4a0
+)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 5496
        CPAN::Module::rematein('CPAN::Module=HASH(0xa3513b0)', 'instal
+l') called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 5560
        CPAN::Module::install('CPAN::Module=HASH(0xa3513b0)') called a
+t /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 5095
        CPAN::Bundle::rematein('CPAN::Bundle=HASH(0xb7ac3768)', 'insta
+ll') called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 5177
        CPAN::Bundle::install('CPAN::Bundle=HASH(0xb7ac3768)') called 
+at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 2138
        CPAN::Shell::rematein('CPAN::Shell', 'install', 'Bundle::CPAN'
+) called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 2165
        CPAN::Shell::install('CPAN::Shell', 'Bundle::CPAN') called at 
+/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 201
        eval {...} called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 201
        CPAN::shell() called at /usr/bin/cpan line 193
[download]

I'm a little lost, but, ready to learn how to get this done. Cheers.

coolboarderguy...

Hi All,

more of the same, at another attempt. This is an install of perl via yum. Should I perhaps try removing it, and installing perl from source, perhaps? Cheers.

coolboarderguy...

Use of uninitialized value in chdir at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm li
+ne 4487.
Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() is deprecated at /usr/lib/
+perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4487.
Can't open perl script "Makefile.PL": No such file or directory.
Use -S to search $PATH for it.
Bundle summary: The following items in bundle Bundle::CPAN had install
+ation
problems:
  Module::Signature Compress::Zlib Archive::Tar Archive::Zip Bundle::l
+ibnet
  Term::ReadKey Term::ReadLine::Perl YAML Text::Glob Module::Build CPA
+N and
  the following items had problems during recursive bundle calls:
  Net::Telnet
Panic: no build_dir? at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/CPAN.pm line 4666.
[download]

In my own dealings with rpm-based systems in the past that was often the best solution, remove the perl that came with the OS (or at least as much of it as you can without crippling the system entirely) and install a new one from scratch in /usr/local/... Now that I'm on Debian I go the opposite way and use dh-make-perl to generate .debs from any CPAN package I want to install, which is much nicer of course. I don't know whether an equivalent script exists for your system (if not it shouldn't be too hard to create one yourself, or possibly even use dh-make-perl and then alien --to-rpm to create appropriate system packages? Dunno whether that is even possible though).

None of this is very much help with your immediate problem of course, it seems to me that you're having version problems from mixing two different perl module sources, but that's all I can say.


All dogma is stupid.