Can't install CPAN on Debian etch

My first thought is to check if the modules you need are already available via apt-get to avoid CPAN altogether. The general convention is that module "Foo::Bar" is packaged as "libfoo-bar-perl", although there exceptions, for example libwww-perl contains a bunch of HTML and HTTP related modules. The command "apt-cache search 'Foo::Bar'" is your friend.

The second thought is that CPAN is a standard part of the perl distribution; try 'man cpan'.

Steve,

Many thanks! As it turns out, I just installed a group of programs, following the suggestions in the "perfect Setup" tutorial for Debian Etch at

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfectsetupdebianetchp4

– and now the cpan module is working from my terminal! It must have been enabled in the process. As you note, cpan is part of the standard Perl distribution, but for some reason, it wouldn't launch earlier. But I may just use apt-get for most, if not all, of my Perl modules, instead of cpan.

I didn't know about the 'apt-cache search' command, which is a very good thing indeed! Many thanks for the help. I'm enjoying apt-get a lot more than RedHat rpms (:->)

• Chris

If you find yourself working with a system that seems to be having this sort of trouble, try typing:

perl -MCPAN -e 'shell'