Try HTTP instead.

How do you do that?

By adding HTTP URLs in the URL-list. The main tool to manage that list is "o conf" in the CPAN shell.

You can see the current contents (under "urllist") with just "o conf", or, more limited in output, with "o conf urllist".

You can replace the whole URL-list with, for example (this is the contents I have, which must have been put there by default):

o conf urllist http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN http://cpan.perl.org
[download]

You can also add a URL to the existing list with shift and push, like this:

o conf urllist push http://cpan.perl.org
o conf urllist unshift http://cpan.perl.org
[download]

or drop the first or last entry resp. with

o conf urllist shift
o conf urllist pop
[download]

You must save the changes with

o conf commit
[download]

or you can rollback (after a disastrous mistake) with

o conf defaults
[download]

HTH.

Thank you very much for step by step instructions. I am a perl / Linux newbie and was trying to get some perl modules installed for past 2 days. Even though my firewall was allowing ftp, somehow I couldn't download the required modules using ftp. As soon as i added https to my cpan config file, things worked flawlessly. Thanks again

Um. . .if you could get to a CPAN shell without going through this we wouldn't be having this conversation, right?

after much frustration, the following worked for me:

1. cpan <-- answer "no" to initial setup.
   This allows (auto configured) Config.pm file (see below) to be initialised. Previously I think this file had "1;" or something helpful in it!
2. I then added:
   

     'dontload_hash' => {"Net::FTP" => 1, "LWP" =>1 }, # disable Net::FTP
   + and LWP which usually hang
   to: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm - see section:
   $CPAN::Config = {
   ...
   [download]

   but this alone did not seem to do the job. I'm still not sure if this step had any effect.
3. (in cpan shell)

   o conf urllist http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN http://cpan.perl.org
   o conf commit
   quit
   [download]

worked for me - thanks!

20100528 Janitored by Corion: Added formatting, code tags, as per Writeup Formatting Tips

So I did ... # perl -MCPAN -e 'shell' And then ... cpan> o conf urllist http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN http://cpan.perl.org cpan> exit Terminal does not support GetHistory. Lockfile removed. But when I do # cpan I still get ... Fetching with Net::FTP: ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/MIRRORED.BY Fetching with Net::FTP ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/MIRRORED.BY.gz