Running as user, you can't install to usr/local as you don't have permissions. The 'make install' phase needs to be run as root.

Not true. On almost all boxes I run, I install my own perl. Most of them don't need root access at all - except for the creation of a single directory. Here's a way the OP could do it:

$ sudo mkdir /lab/perl
$ sudo chown your_user_name: /lab/perl
$ ... Fetch tarball ...
$ ... Unpack tarball ...
$ ... cd source directory ...
$ ./Configure -des -Dprefix=/lab/perl
$ make && make test && make install
$ /lab/perl/bin/perl -MCPAN -eshell   # Configure CPAN
$ /lab/perl/bin/cpan -i Module1 Module2 Module3 Module4 ....
[download]

No need to run any code downloaded from the internet as root. I typically create a dedicated "perladmin" user to manage the boxes perl and CPAN modules. /opt/perl is my favourite directory to install it in - with /usr/bin/perl a symlink to /opt/perl/bin/perl. (Making the symlink requires root access as well). If you're too scared to get rid to the "system perl"¹, move /usr/bin/perl to /usr/bin/systemperl, and change the shebang line of any script that needs the "system perl" and fails on your own perl accordingly.

1	After all, technology we don't understand is cannot be distinguished from magic.

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