April 14, 2004

More blogging for Google: I routinely have a particular problem installing Perl modules with CPAN for the first time on a host. When installing a module, it will fail on the first step, fetching "01mailrc.txt" via FTP from the mirrors I selected. It takes forever to time out on each host and tries a myriad of options, failing completely. The best solution I could find seems less than ideal, but it works: Reset your CPAN config and pick only http:// protocol mirrors. FTP appears to be to blame, though I'm not sure why. To re-initialize CPAN configuration after having done it once already:

perl -MCPAN -e 'o conf init;'

comments...

Dan Sanderson, April 14, 2004 1:06 AM:

Note that this is typically a problem if you need to use an FTP proxy and aren't, though this isn't the case for me. CPAN will let you set an FTP proxy.

Dan Sanderson, May 1, 2004 5:54 AM:

Quick correction: Re-initialize CPAN configuration with "perl -MCPAN -e 'shell;'" then specify "o conf init" at the prompt. Too lazy to figure out the correct command-line direct way to re-initialize config, someone post if they know it.