From your OP and subsequent reply to BrowserUk, I get the impression that you are dealing with an embedded system of some kind, one that runs Linux and already has Perl installed. If so, is there any 'native' way to transfer a file onto this system? (How do you 'talk' to this board?) If a file or files can be transferred to the system, cannot the file or files that comprise Device::SerialPort be transferred in this way and installed by hand? See Yes, even you can use CPAN.