Why does CPAN.pm fail to upgrade?

Question

Clarification: I'm pretty much a Perl/CPAN noob, don't assume I know too much.

I have a pretty vanilla CPAN because I just rebuild my entire Lenny 5.0.2 VPS - so I pretty much have the default modules installed.

My eventual goal is to setup foswiki on my Apache 2.x based server.

So far I'm reading this guide and it says the first thing you should do is upgrade CPAN to the latest version. So I did (as su):

# perl -MCPAN -e '$ENV{FTP_PASSIVE} = 1; install CPAN'

Now, it's installing/updating a bunch of stuff, here's an excerpt:

CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Expect-1.00.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-UnsatPrereq-1.00.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/cpantestdummies/
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/cpantestdummies/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Features-1.05.tgz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/cpantestdummies/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Zip-1.03.zip
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CHECKSUMS.2nd
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-1.05.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Failearly-1.02.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/CpanTestDummies-1.55.pm
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/TestConfig.pm
CPAN-1.9402/t/51pod.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/02nox.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/50pod.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/10version.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/yaml_code.yml
CPAN-1.9402/t/04clean_load.t
CPAN-1.9402/README
CPAN: File::Temp loaded ok (v0.18)

  CPAN.pm: Going to build A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz

Importing PAUSE public key into your GnuPG keychain... gpg: new configuration file `/root/.gnupg/gpg.conf' created
gpg: WARNING: options in `/root/.gnupg/gpg.conf' are not yet active during this run
done!
(You may wish to trust it locally with 'gpg --lsign-key 450F89EC')
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for CPAN
Could not read '/root/.cpan/build/CPAN-1.9402-fmK7xK/META.yml'. Falling back to other methods to determine prerequisites
  ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz
  make -- NOT OK
Warning (usually harmless): 'YAML' not installed, will not store persistent state
Running make test
  Can't test without successful make
Running make install
  Make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
kat:~# 

I've searched Google and came across one page that said you should whenever possible install the package from aptitude/apt-get/yum, so I found a package named libyaml-perl, marked it for download, that went through fine.

Then I re-tried my initial command that installs the latest version of CPAN and ...

CPAN-1.9402/t/50pod.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/10version.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/yaml_code.yml
CPAN-1.9402/t/04clean_load.t
CPAN-1.9402/README
CPAN: File::Temp loaded ok (v0.18)
CPAN: YAML loaded ok (v0.66)

CPAN.pm: Going to build A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz

Importing PAUSE public key into your GnuPG keychain... done!
(You may wish to trust it locally with 'gpg --lsign-key 450F89EC')
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for CPAN
  ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz
  make -- NOT OK
Running make test
  Can't test without successful make
Running make install
  Make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

No clue what I should do now. Is there a way I can reset everything? Maybe I need to kill the file it tried to process so it can try to re-process it or something along those lines? If anyone else has general CPAN tips in addition to figuring out what this is, I'd be grateful.

• Did I install the yaml package the right way?
• Should I have done it from within CPAN?
• What proper steps or modules should I get first?

Eventually I'll need to install these for foswiki:

• CGI::Session - Needed for Foswiki's session feature which is really a must have
• Error - Needed if you later want to develop plugins. It is also distributed with Foswiki but the author has experienced lots of trouble with the build script that builds plugins which sometimes cannot find this library. By adding it to the site Perl library you avoid this kind of trouble.
• FreezeThaw - an indirectly needed module used by other modules.
• GD - Used by the pluging that can produce graphics such as Foswiki:Plugins.ChartPlugin. It requires that lib gd is installed. If your choice of installation does not include you simply need to install the rpms gd and gd-devel. They are both on the CDs or DVD.
• HTML::Tree - Needed by some popular plugins
• Time-modules (Time::CTime, Time::DaysInMonth, Time::JulianDay, Time::ParseDate, Time::Timezone) also needed by some popular plugins.

Answer 1

What does o conf make in cpan shell say? Do you have make installed?

Generally, install build-essential (it's in ubuntu, so it should be also in Debian), and then do o conf init in cpan shell.

Answer 2

1. Consider using CPANPLUS (cpanp script) instead of CPAN.
2. Consider installing YAML before installing anything else.
3. Consider setting the configuration to follow prerequisites (that is, when some package requires some other module that is currently missing, it will go ahead and install the other module - recursively as necessary).

Answer 3

Use debian's package management facilities to install: See instructions on the foswiki web site.

Stick with the platform-specific package management tools 99% of the time. Otherwise, configure CPAN to install in a separate directory (which you can add to $PERL5LIB).