Perl cpan: error installing DateTime, CHECKSUM download failure

Question

I am running Perl 5.10 on a shared Red Hat Linux 6.2 server. I have asked the root user of the machine to install the Perl DateTime module for me, using the following commands:

perl -MCPAN -e shell cpan> install DateTime

We were able to successfully install other Perl modules such as Text::CSV before.

But the following error occurred while installing DateTime. Here is the last bits of error log:

Question: It looks like the error might be complaining about not being able to fetch the CHECKSUM file from ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS. However, I have no problem browsing to this exact file from my Internet Explorer. Can someone suggest ways to workaround this? Thanks.

Trying with "/usr/bin/wget -O /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.tmp12173" to get
    "ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.gz"
    --2013-06-20 09:30:06--  ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.gz
           => b/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.tmp12173b
Resolving ftp.perl.org... 203.178.137.175, 163.143.1.21 Connecting to ftp.perl.org|203.178.137.175|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD (1) /pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS ... done.
==> SIZE CHECKSUMS.gz ... done.
==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR CHECKSUMS.gz ... 
No such file bCHECKSUMS.gzb.

Warning: no success downloading '/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.tmp12173'. Giving up on it. at /usr/share/perl5/CPAN/Distribution.pm line
1311

As a last resort we now switch to the external ftp command '/usr/kerberos/bin/ftp'
to get '/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.tmp12173'.

Doing so often leads to problems that are hard to diagnose.

If you're the victim of such problems, please consider unsetting the ftp config variable with

    o conf ftp ""
    o conf commit

Issuing "/usr/kerberos/bin/ftp -n"

  Trying with external ftp to get
    ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS
  Going to send the dialog
    open ftp.perl.org
    user anonymous Red Hat, Inc.@localhost.localdomain
    lcd /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS
    cd /
    cd pub
    cd CPAN
    cd authors
    cd id
    cd R
    cd RJ
    cd RJBS
    bin
    get CHECKSUMS CHECKSUMS.tmp12173
    quit

Not connected.
Local directory now /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Bad luck... Still failed!
Can't access URL ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.

Your urllist is empty! The urllist can be edited. E.g. with 'o conf urllist push ftp://myurl/'

Could not fetch authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS

UPDATE1:

We also tried the o conf ftp "" and o conf commit commands, but we still had an error.

Trying with "/usr/bin/wget -O /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.tmp16529" to get
    "http://www.perl.org/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.gz"
    --2013-06-20 13:52:07--  http://www.perl.org/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.gz
Resolving www.perl.org... 207.171.7.41, 207.171.7.51 Connecting to www.perl.org|207.171.7.41|:80... failed: Connection refused.
Connecting to www.perl.org|207.171.7.51|:80... failed: Connection refused.
Warning: no success downloading '/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS.tmp16529'. Giving up on it. at /usr/share/perl5/CPAN/Distribution.pm line
1311
Fetching with LWP:
  ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/CHECKSUMS
Checksum for /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/Test-Fatal-0.010.tar.gz ok Test-Fatal-0.010 Test-Fatal-0.010/README Test-Fatal-0.010/Changes Test-Fatal-0.010/LICENSE Test-Fatal-0.010/dist.ini Test-Fatal-0.010/META.yml Test-Fatal-0.010/MANIFEST Test-Fatal-0.010/t Test-Fatal-0.010/t/basic.t Test-Fatal-0.010/META.json Test-Fatal-0.010/Makefile.PL Test-Fatal-0.010/lib/Test Test-Fatal-0.010/lib/Test/Fatal.pm
Test-Fatal-0.010/t/like-exception.t
Test-Fatal-0.010/t/release-pod-syntax.t

  CPAN.pm: Going to build R/RJ/RJBS/Test-Fatal-0.010.tar.gz

Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Warning: prerequisite Try::Tiny 0.07 not found.
Writing Makefile for Test::Fatal
Could not read '/root/.cpan/build/Test-Fatal-0.010-GNYnPy/META.yml'. Falling back to other methods to determine prerequisites
---- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during ----
----       RJBS/Test-Fatal-0.010.tar.gz       ----
    Try::Tiny [requires]
Shall I follow them and prepend them to the queue of modules we are processing right now? [yes] Running make test
  Delayed until after prerequisites
Running make install
  Delayed until after prerequisites
Running install for module 'Try::Tiny'
'YAML' not installed, falling back to Data::Dumper and Storable to read prefs '/root/.cpan/prefs'
Running make for D/DO/DOY/Try-Tiny-0.12.tar.gz Fetching with LWP:
  http://www.perl.org/CPAN/authors/id/D/DO/DOY/Try-Tiny-0.12.tar.gz
LWP failed with code[500] message[Can't connect to www.perl.org:80 (connect: Connection refused)] Fetching with LWP:
  ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/D/DO/DOY/Try-Tiny-0.12.tar.gz
LWP failed with code[500] message[]
Fetching with Net::FTP:
  ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/D/DO/DOY/Try-Tiny-0.12.tar.gz
Catching error: "Timeout at /usr/share/perl5/Net/FTP.pm line 491\cJ" at /usr/share/perl5/CPAN.pm line 391
        CPAN::shell() called at -e line 1

Answer 1

did you do what it suggested?

If you're the victim of such problems, please consider unsetting the ftp config variable with

o conf ftp ""
o conf commit

Alternatively, you can download the module as a gz file from the cpan site uncompress it cd to the directory do

  perl Build.PL
./Build install

or

perl Makefile.PL 
make install

accordingly.

This is all that cpan will be doing so you will see if you're missing any packages or modules

incidentally, you don't need to be root if you are happy to install your modules somewhere else. There are plenty of examples to achieve this