Please show us the output of such a botched cpan session. I think I remember that problem, and it had something to do with installing a bad version of Archive::Tar which didn't extract the distributions properly. - have you changed anything in your setup there?

The other problems I can help only little with - either find a separate machine with the same architecture, on which you can compile the modules and then copy them over, or maybe use CPAN::SQLite, which supposedly has lesser memory requirements.

For your test machine, just compile your own "dev" Perl, a Perl 5.8.8 - that should be all that's needed and that's just a download of perl and

tar xvf ...
sh Configure -Dprefix=/home/silas/perl-5.8.8
[download]

Please show us the output of such a botched cpan session.

cpan UNIVERSAL::can
CPAN: Storable loaded ok (v2.15)
Going to read /root/.cpan/Metadata
  Database was generated on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:27:04 GMT
CPAN: YAML loaded ok (v0.68)
Going to read 45 yaml files from /root/.cpan/build/
CPAN: Time::HiRes loaded ok (v1.86)
......................................................................
+......DONE
Restored the state of 45 (in 0.4750 secs)
Running install for module 'UNIVERSAL::can'
Running make for C/CH/CHROMATIC/UNIVERSAL-can-1.15.tar.gz
Unwrapping had some problem, won't try again without force
  Had problems unarchiving. Please build manually
Running make test
  Make had some problems, won't test
Running make install
  Make had some problems, won't install
[download]

A manual install works without any issues.

I think I remember that problem, and it had something to do with installing a bad version of Archive::Tar which didn't extract the distributions properly.

I have tried Archive::Tar upgrading from 1.48 to 1.52 but it has made no difference. An example of where everything is missing.

prod> ls -l
total 2513
drwxr-xr-x 8 1000 1000    1024 Sep 10 11:03 CPAN-1.9402
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2560000 Sep 10 09:36 CPAN-1.9402.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     242 Sep 10 09:36 Makefile.PL
prod> cat Makefile.PL
# This Makefile.PL has been autogenerated by the module CPAN.pm
# because there was no Makefile.PL supplied.
# Autogenerated on: Thu Sep 10 09:36:55 2009

use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
WriteMakefile(
              NAME => q[CPAN],
             );
[download]

Again a manual install worked.

r maybe use CPAN::SQLite, which supposedly has lesser memory requirements. For your test machine, just compile your own "dev" Perl, a Perl 5.8.8 -

Both ideas sound worth a try and will get added to the evergrowing to do list.

...and then complains that everything is missing.

What exactly is "everything"? I would start by picking out a couple of the those modules that are supposedly missing, and check manually (outside of the cpan shell) whether they're installed and can be loaded.

Update: regarding your edit, what wider issues do you still need help with?

What did you expect to happen? Are you sure you weren't thinking of cpanp x (aka cpanp -x)? Which version of cpan?

However I have deeper problems. When I tried to install DBD::SQLite it ran out of memory during compilation.

Were you trying to install with cpan? Try from the shell CPAN>look DBD::SQLite or cpanp z ADAMK/DBD-SQLite-1.26_03.tar.gz

cpan[2]> install CPAN::SQLite
Running install for module 'CPAN::SQLite'
Running make for R/RK/RKOBES/CPAN-SQLite-0.197.tar.gz
Unwrapping had some problem, won't try again without force
  Had problems unarchiving. Please build manually
Running make test
  Make had some problems, won't test
Running make install
  Make had some problems, won't install

cpan[3]> look DBD::SQLite
Running look for module 'DBD::SQLite'

Trying to open a subshell in the build directory...
Working directory is /root/.cpan/build/DBD-SQLite-1.25-9OFGQP
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I also have no "cpanp" in my path.

Why did you stop there?

(I'm looking through the posts and I don't see anything about when it did work- If I missed it please excuse me.)

• If it was working before, what changed?
• Are there other users with your level of access to that machine?
• What about ENV (environment variables)? Use # set on the cli
• check your ~/.bashrc , is there anything new in there for paths, libs etc?
• Check for symlinks in /usr/lib/perl* between directories

If it was working before, what changed?

I cannot say that every install was always smooth. But usually it would fail somewhere in the test. I don't remember having these difficulties. It used to be the case that I could install a module, it would pull in a few dependencies and only occasionally fail. I cannot think of anything that has changed that would explain it.

Are there other users with your level of access to that machine?

No. Obviously there is the service provider but I don't think perl support is in the service agreement. It's all down to me.

What about ENV (environment variables)? check your ~/.bashrc , is there anything new in there for paths, libs etc? Check for symlinks in /usr/lib/perl* between directories

minimal

Edit: I forgot to mention I don't get these issues on the test machine.

• It may also be worth looking over your cpan config...

  It may be somewhere like '/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm' .. I think maybe older CPAN was using the ~/.cpan dir or something with config- not certain about that. The default config can be overridden with ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm (see below)

  Try # locate CPAN | grep -i config

  Here is one of mine (/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm), in case something really different stands out..

  
  # This is CPAN.pm's systemwide configuration file. This file provides
  # defaults for users, and the values can be changed in a per-user
  # configuration file. The user-config file is being looked for as
  # ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm.
  
  $CPAN::Config = {
    'auto_commit' => q[1],
    'build_cache' => q[10],
    'build_dir' => q[/root/.cpan/build],
    'cache_metadata' => q[1],
    'commandnumber_in_prompt' => q[1],
    'cpan_home' => q[/root/.cpan],
    'dontload_hash' => {  },
    'ftp' => q[/usr/bin/ftp],
    'ftp_passive' => q[1],
    'ftp_proxy' => q[],
    'getcwd' => q[cwd],
    'gpg' => q[/usr/bin/gpg],
    'gzip' => q[/usr/bin/gzip],
    'histfile' => q[/root/.cpan/histfile],
    'histsize' => q[500],
    'http_proxy' => q[],
    'inactivity_timeout' => q[0],
    'index_expire' => q[1],
    'inhibit_startup_message' => q[0],
    'keep_source_where' => q[/root/.cpan/sources],
    'make' => q[/usr/bin/make],
    'make_arg' => q[],
    'make_install_arg' => q[],
    'make_install_make_command' => q[/usr/bin/make],
    'makepl_arg' => q[],
    'mbuild_arg' => q[],
    'mbuild_install_arg' => q[],
    'mbuild_install_build_command' => q[./Build],
    'mbuildpl_arg' => q[],
    'ncftp' => q[/usr/bin/ncftpget],
    'ncftpget' => q[],
    'no_proxy' => q[],
    'pager' => q[/usr/bin/less],
    'prerequisites_policy' => q[follow],
    'scan_cache' => q[atstart],
    'shell' => q[/bin/bash],
    'show_upload_date' => q[0],
    'tar' => q[/bin/tar],
    'term_is_latin' => q[1],
    'term_ornaments' => q[1],
    'unzip' => q[/usr/bin/unzip],
    'urllist' => [q[ftp://cpan.pair.com/pub/CPAN/], q[ftp://carroll.cac.
  +psu.edu/pub/CPAN/]],
    'use_sqlite' => q[0],
    'wget' => q[/usr/bin/wget],
  };
  1;
  __END__
  [download]

  Also, I am assuming you are running as root.. look inside ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm, is that file there? Anything strange?

• And you did mention you looked inside ~/.bashrc and there's nothing freaky.

• Maybe also compare the test and production machines cpan configs (against each other).. and their env set variables ( with '# set' ).

• And maybe '# uname -a' on both machines, maybe check google for anything with cpan fails and that architecture.. google for = 'site:http://www.linuxquestions.org/ $architecture cpan failure' (there may be something)

(You probably already did all of this, I don't want to seem patronizing)