Installing Perl modules automatically

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello monks,
I have installed Cygwin afresh on Windows 2003 Server. And I have to install additional Perl modules which are not included in default installation. In order to do it automatically, I have created local mirror (by using cpan::mini module) and reconfigured MyConfig.pm file, so it will work with my local mirror. I use following command for modules installation:

perl -MCPAN -e install Bundle::Snapshot_XXXX_XX_XX_XX
[download]

And until today it was working fine. Now, I am getting the following error:

CPAN: Storable loaded ok
Going to read /home/ABC/.cpan/Metadata
Database was generated on Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:56:10 GMT
LWP not available
No external ftp command available
Please check, if the URLs I found in your configuration file(file:////
+cygdrive/c/cygwin/home/ABC/local/LocalMirror/) are valid. 
The urllist can be edited. E.g. with 'o conf urllist push ftp://myurl/
+'
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It looks like it is trying to connect to the internet and fails. (My local network has no connection to the internet). My MyConfig.pm hasn't been changed and it exactly the same file that is working perfectly on other machines. My guess is that there are other configuration files that overwrite MyConfig.pm file.

What shall I do in order to solve this problem?

Many thanks

20080115 Janitored by Corion: Added formatting, code tags, as per Writeup Formatting Tips

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Re: Installing Perl modules automatically by Herkum (Parson) on Dec 08, 2007 at 12:55 UTC
See if you can use FTP (manually) to connect to your local mirror from that machine. If no FTP your system is having an issue. If FTP works to another site, check to see if you can see if you can get to your mirror. In theory your mirror maybe down. See if you can manually install modules via CPAN. If not the most likely thing is that your cpan config is screwed up if you can do the previous two steps.	[reply]
Re^2: Installing Perl modules automatically by Anonymous Monk on Dec 08, 2007 at 13:49 UTC
Thank you for the quick response. Could you please be more specific about FTP issue because it is not quite clear for me why should check if it is possible to use ftp. In MyConfig.pm file I gave local URL and from the error log I can see that it was found: Please check, if the URLs I found in your configuration file(file:////cygdrive/c/cygwin/home/ABC/local/LocalMirror/) are valid. I can download and manually install modules from CPAN. I agree with you that, apparently cpan config is screwed up. But what exactly are those files and where I can find them? Thanks	[reply]
Re^3: Installing Perl modules automatically by Herkum (Parson) on Dec 08, 2007 at 15:32 UTC
Could you please be more specific about FTP issue because it is not quite clear for me why should check if it is possible to use ftp the CPAN utility will use the ftp command-line utility to do FTP's. If it cannot find 'ftp', it cannot get the information from your mirror. It might be a search path problem for the user account or the utility got moved or deleted. Please check, if the URLs I found in your configuration I would not worry about that so much if you are getting the 'ftp' is missing error. You can be getting this error simply because of poor error handling on the part of the program.	[reply]
Re^4: Installing Perl modules automatically by Anonymous Monk on Dec 08, 2007 at 15:53 UTC
Re^4: Installing Perl modules automatically by Anonymous Monk on Dec 08, 2007 at 16:15 UTC
Re^5: Installing Perl modules automatically by Anonymous Monk on Dec 09, 2007 at 07:24 UTC
Re: Installing Perl modules automatically by bdimych (Monk) on Dec 08, 2007 at 15:46 UTC
1. If you have fast internet, then I recommend you to install two cygwin categories "Network" and "Devel" entirely 2. As I noticed, CPAN module routinely try to download the list of modules from CPAN servers	[reply]
Re^2: Installing Perl modules automatically by Anonymous Monk on Dec 08, 2007 at 16:07 UTC
If you have fast internet, then I recommend you to install two cygwin categories "Network" and "Devel" entirely I have installed the whole "Devel" category and and I will install "Net". As I see it has several ftp options As I noticed, CPAN module routinely try to download the list of modules from CPAN servers Do you know how I can cancel it? Do you know any files (except MyConfig.pm) that are resposible for CPAN configuration? Thanks Edit: g0n - fixed broken BR tags	[reply]
Re^3: Installing Perl modules automatically by bdimych (Monk) on Dec 08, 2007 at 20:37 UTC
>Do you know how I can cancel it? Sorry, I don't know, I never tried to change default options ----- I'm just now reading man CPAN. Option "index_expire" may be what you need.	[reply]
Re: Installing Perl modules automatically by CountZero (Bishop) on Dec 08, 2007 at 21:31 UTC
Are you sure CPAN is reading the right config file? If you have multiple users installed on your machine, each may have its own `MyConfig.pm` which will override the system wide `Config.pm` and if you install as a different user, you may very well get different results. CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James	[reply] [d/l] [select]


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