It may also be worth looking over your cpan config...
It may be somewhere like '/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm' .. I think maybe older CPAN was using the ~/.cpan dir or something with config- not certain about that. The default config can be overridden with ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm (see below)
Try # locate CPAN | grep -i config
Here is one of mine (/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm), in case something really different stands out..
# This is CPAN.pm's systemwide configuration file. This file provides
# defaults for users, and the values can be changed in a per-user
# configuration file. The user-config file is being looked for as
# ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm.
$CPAN::Config = {
'auto_commit' => q[1],
'build_cache' => q[10],
'build_dir' => q[/root/.cpan/build],
'cache_metadata' => q[1],
'commandnumber_in_prompt' => q[1],
'cpan_home' => q[/root/.cpan],
'dontload_hash' => { },
'ftp' => q[/usr/bin/ftp],
'ftp_passive' => q[1],
'ftp_proxy' => q[],
'getcwd' => q[cwd],
'gpg' => q[/usr/bin/gpg],
'gzip' => q[/usr/bin/gzip],
'histfile' => q[/root/.cpan/histfile],
'histsize' => q[500],
'http_proxy' => q[],
'inactivity_timeout' => q[0],
'index_expire' => q[1],
'inhibit_startup_message' => q[0],
'keep_source_where' => q[/root/.cpan/sources],
'make' => q[/usr/bin/make],
'make_arg' => q[],
'make_install_arg' => q[],
'make_install_make_command' => q[/usr/bin/make],
'makepl_arg' => q[],
'mbuild_arg' => q[],
'mbuild_install_arg' => q[],
'mbuild_install_build_command' => q[./Build],
'mbuildpl_arg' => q[],
'ncftp' => q[/usr/bin/ncftpget],
'ncftpget' => q[],
'no_proxy' => q[],
'pager' => q[/usr/bin/less],
'prerequisites_policy' => q[follow],
'scan_cache' => q[atstart],
'shell' => q[/bin/bash],
'show_upload_date' => q[0],
'tar' => q[/bin/tar],
'term_is_latin' => q[1],
'term_ornaments' => q[1],
'unzip' => q[/usr/bin/unzip],
'urllist' => [q[ftp://cpan.pair.com/pub/CPAN/], q[ftp://carroll.cac.
+psu.edu/pub/CPAN/]],
'use_sqlite' => q[0],
'wget' => q[/usr/bin/wget],
};
1;
__END__
Also, I am assuming you are running as root.. look inside ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm, is that file there? Anything strange?