in reply to Local CPAN settings

Good meditation; I've been there.

As you have observed, some versions of CPAN.pm install config information to a CPAN::Config in everybody's @INC path, in such a way as to prevent non-root users from using CPAN.pm. When this happens, I have removed (or simply moved out of the way) Config.pm, and rerun the configuration dialogue as a non-root user.

As an aside, I have a standard technique for dealing with CPAN on Unix systems. The first stage might be to upgrade the perl if the version is older than I am comfortable with. Otherwise, in most instances, the version of CPAN.pm that the installed Perl ships with is a bit old.

I install curl, ncftp and lynx, as these are tools that CPAN.pm will be asking for. And I install and configure sudo of course if it's not there.

As root, I upgrade CPAN.pm to the latest, going through all the configuration questions installing CPAN and leaving the CPAN shell. Then, as my non-root user I run cpan and go through the questions again, except this time, there are more of them, including questions about make install and ./build install. To these questions I use the sudo form of the command. Once this dialogue is complete, I can install Bundle::CPAN and any other modules I want, painlessly.

--

Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
(Missquoting Janis Joplin)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Local CPAN settings
by Herkum (Parson) on Feb 21, 2007 at 18:44 UTC
    When you say, use the sudo form of the command, can you give an example? Just trying to understand what you are doing.
[reply]

      OK, I'll paste some excerpts from the dialogue from cpan "o conf init".

      Do you want to use a different make command for 'make install'?
Cautious people will probably prefer:

    su root -c make
or
    sudo make
or
    /path1/to/sudo -u admin_account /path2/to/make

or some such. Your choice:  [sudo make]

...


Do you want to use a different command for './Build install'?
Sudo users will probably prefer:

    su root -c ./Build
or
    sudo ./Build
or
    /path1/to/sudo -u admin_account ./Build

or some such. Your choice:  [sudo ./Build]

      [download]

      --

      Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
      My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
      Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
      So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
      (Missquoting Janis Joplin)

[reply]
[d/l]
        OK, now I understand, thank you for example! :)
[reply]

In Section Meditations