in reply to perl module installs getting really mesed up

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

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Re^2: perl module installs getting really mesed up
by SilasTheMonk (Chaplain) on Sep 10, 2009 at 10:57 UTC
    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.
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