You might use strace -f -o /tmp/xyz as a prefix to your cpan invocation. You'll then find in /tmp/xyz all system calls done by cpan and even if you don't know much about unix you probably can identify the specific system call that resulted in the warning message somewhere near the end of the file. Check the man-page for that call or post it here for an interpretation.

Maybe the error message you got is wrong (bug in cpan or some installer!?), and it really is a full file system or a corrupted file system or a totally different directory that denies access. Try df /home/wright/.cpan/sources/ to check for space left on the partition it is in. This also shows you whether the dir is really in the file system you expect

Thanks for the reply to both you and almut!

Your first suggestion worked out just fine. No problems there at all. I was able to do 'touch xyz' and it created the file without a hitch. So I tried the strace and came back with a 25M file, of which I searched for a permissions issue and it came back with this:

15290 open("/etc/shadow", O_RDONLY)     = -1 EACCES (Permission denied
+)
15290 stat64("/home/wright/.libnetrc", 0x8121b60) = -1 ENOENT (No such
+ file or directory)
15290 stat64("utils/Fcntl.pmc", 0xbfffd5e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file 
+or directory)
15290 open("utils/Fcntl.pm", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No suc
+h file or directory)
15290 stat64("/home/wright/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i686-linux/Fcntl.
+pmc", 0xbfffd5e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 open("/home/wright/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i686-linux/Fcntl.pm
+", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 stat64("/home/wright/lib/perl­5/site_perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pmc", 0xbf
+ffd5e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 open("/home/wright/lib/perl­5/site_perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm", O_RDONL
+Y|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 stat64("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/Fcntl.pmc", 0xbfffd5e0) 
+= -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 open("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/Fcntl.pm", O_RDONLY|O_LARG
+EFILE) = 4
15290 ioctl(4, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE, 0xbfffd3e0) = -1 ENOTTY (Inappropr
+iate ioctl for device)
15290 _llseek(4, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR)      = 0
15290 brk(0x8499000)                    = 0x8499000
15290 read(4, "package Fcntl;\n\n=head1 NAME\n\nFcn"..., 4096) = 4096
15290 brk(0x849a000)                    = 0x849a000
15290 read(4, "SENFMT\t\t\n\t\t     S_IFMT S_IMODE\n "..., 4096) = 102
+6
15290 brk(0x849b000)                    = 0x849b000
15290 brk(0x849c000)                    = 0x849c000
15290 brk(0x849d000)                    = 0x849d000
15290 brk(0x849e000)                    = 0x849e000
15290 brk(0x849f000)                    = 0x849f000
15290 read(4, "", 4096)                 = 0
15290 close(4)                          = 0
15290 brk(0x84a0000)                    = 0x84a0000
15290 stat64("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so", {s
+t_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=11256, ...}) = 0
15290 stat64("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs", {s
+t_mode=S_IFREG|0444, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
15290 open("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so", O_RD
+ONLY) = 4
15290 read(4, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\260\t\0
+"..., 1024) = 1024
15290 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=11256, ...}) = 0
15290 old_mmap(NULL, 14180, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 4, 0) = 
+0x2d6000
15290 mprotect(0x2d9000, 1892, PROT_NONE) = 0
15290 old_mmap(0x2d9000, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_F
+IXED, 4, 0x2000) = 0x2d9000
15290 close(4)                          = 0
[download]

Hopefully I've provided enough of a snippet there that it makes sense to you, because unfortunately it's left me more confused than when I started. I would think that since the CPAN shell is running in my local directory it should be able to create the directories it needs or am I wrong in that?

I've tried to even install some of the pre-requisites *before* trying Crypt::OpenPGP but when I then try to install the module, it seems to be saying that the pre-requisites that I've already (I thought) installed aren't there which makes no sense as they seem to have installed with no errors.

Finally, the df command returned:

Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1            198980892 129116736  69864156  65% /
[download]

so I would think that I've got plenty of room to install all that I'm trying to do, don't I?

---

Revolution. Today, 3 O'Clock. Meet behind the monkey bars.

I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code

Sorry for the late reply. Actually almut has the probable cause of your problems. Especially after all my suggestions turned up negative.

EDIT: A step-by-step recipe of almuts solution:

First find the installed ExtUtils::AutoInstall:


locate ExtUtils/AutoInstall
[download]

or


find /usr/lib -name 'AutoInstall.pm' -print
[download]

This will tell you the location of AutoInstall.pm, probably in /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/ExtUtils/

Now copy the systemwide AutoInstall.pm to your homedir:

mkdir ~/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/ExtUtils 
cp <pathtoautoinstall>/AutoInstall.pm ~/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/ExtU
+tils
[download]

Edit your copy of AutoInstall.pm. Find the line mentioned by almut (the one with Config{sitelib}) and change it to the newer version.

That's it. You don't need to change PERL5LIB because you already did this when you installed cpan with Zaxos method.

Older versions of ExtUtils::AutoInstall had the following snippet of code

sub _can_write {
    my $path = shift;
    mkdir ($path, 0755) unless -e $path;

    require Config;
    return 1 if -w $path and -w $Config::Config{sitelib};

    print << ".";
*** You are not allowed to write to the directory '$path';
    the installation may fail due to insufficient permissions.
.
    # ...
[download]

while newer versions just test for -w $path, i.e.

sub _can_write {
    my $path = shift;
    mkdir ($path, 0755) unless -e $path;

    return 1 if -w $path;
    
    # ...
[download]

In other words, if $path isn't the problem, it could still be $Config::Config{sitelib}  (...something the error message doesn't say).

Now I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect Config.pm might not be taking into account that you've told your CPAN shell to install to some other local directory...

Anyhow, I would just try installing the current version of ExtUtils::AutoInstall into some local directory (and set PERL5LIB appropriately, or some such), and see if that works then. (If it doesn't - for some other reason - you could also copy the original (5.8.0) ExtUtils/AutoInstall.pm to some local directory, and edit the respective line to no longer test for Config{sitelib}.)