This looks like your CPAN.pm configuration has a bad value for the make value:

cpan> o conf make
    make               /usr/bin/make
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In the cpan shell you can set a new value with o conf make newvalue, and you'll want to o conf commit to save the new value.

OK, here I think the problem was that I didn't have an entry for make install, but just for make in the cpan MyConfig.pm file.

I've fixed that, and it progressed to test errors in Test::Exception. I've since switched back to the system make.

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

It rather looks like there are dependencies not installed - CPAN will (attempt to) install these dependencies before trying DBM::Deep ... unless, of course, your machines are air-gapped from the inter-web thingy - but there are strategies (posts/responses elsewhere herein) for working round that kind of problem.

Worse still, this 'smells' like your PATH may be set incorrectly (I suspect echo $PATH will return /home/sgriffith/unix/bin) - I would expect the shell to be attempting to locate make in /usr/bin or somewhere more exotic.

HTH ,

OK, uname -a results:

Linux otdp1 2.6.9-67.0.7.ELsmp #1 SMP Sat Mar 15 06:33:45 EDT 2008 x86
+_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
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Linux ltcons1 2.4.21-32.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Apr 15 21:17:59 EDT 2005 i686
+ i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[download]

Both machines are connected to the internet. For instance, I can manually ftp to one of the CPAN mirror sites from both machines.

$PATH is:

.:/home/sgriffit/perl:/home/sgriffit/bin:/home/sgriffit/unix/bin:/usr/perl5/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

-QM
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Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

Can you install any perl modules? If you can't install any, then your looking at a system setup problem. If you only can't install DBM::Deep, then you should concentrate on DBM::Deep itself.

The path to make at '/home/sgriffith/unix/bin/make' looks really odd. I'd expect it to try and use '/usr/bin/make'. Do you know why it's trying to use that copy of make? If it's not something you've done on purpose, then it's probably your problem.

--Pileofrogs

That path to make is my own install of GNU make. I've since switched back to the system supplied make, with no apparent difference.

I've gone through and installed some of the dependencies separately through cpan, some install, some don't. The biggest headache seems to be Test::Exception:

# BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /otdp1_vol1/home/sgriffit/.cpan/build/Test-Exception-0.27/blib/lib/Test/Exception.pm line 6.
# Compilation failed in require at (eval 2) line 2.
# BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 2) line 2.

# Failed test 'cannot pass undef to throws_ok'


-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

Okay, if I reach a point like this, I usually start tinkering with the build by hand. You can go to the build dir in your cpan dir and find the source all unpacked for you. Then you can run make test with the verbosity turned up and that might help.

$ make test TEST_VERBOSE=1
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(I think that's the right syntax)

Another good thing to try is (from the base dir of the unpacked module source)

$ prove -v -I lib t/TESTNAME
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Where TESTNAME is the name of one of the files in the t/ dir. This lets you test one test at a time, and it turns on the verbosity. Read the man page on prove, it's cool.

And then poke around in the t/ directory and read the tests that are failing.

Another thing that can cause problems that are hard to track down is when you install stuff as root with your umask too tight. In English, that means you install stuff and then your non-root account can't read it. If it's a perl dependency, you get the regular lib-not-found error, but if it's some non-perl dependency, you can get the kind of thing you're seeing.