Re: Problem Starting CPAN Shell with ftp.perl.org

[bart]

On a lot of corporate firewalls, FTP is blocked by default. Try HTTP instead.

I don't think it's still the case with the most modern distributions, but the old CPAN was setup by default to only try FTP. Which is... aaaaargggghhhh!! just infuriating.

[monkfan]

Try HTTP instead.

Hi Bart,
How do you do that?

[bart]

How do you do that?

By adding HTTP URLs in the URL-list. The main tool to manage that list is "o conf" in the CPAN shell.

You can see the current contents (under "urllist") with just "o conf", or, more limited in output, with "o conf urllist".

You can replace the whole URL-list with, for example (this is the contents I have, which must have been put there by default):

o conf urllist http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN http://cpan.perl.org

You can also add a URL to the existing list with shift and push, like this:

o conf urllist push http://cpan.perl.org
o conf urllist unshift http://cpan.perl.org

or drop the first or last entry resp. with

o conf urllist shift
o conf urllist pop

You must save the changes with

o conf commit

or you can rollback (after a disastrous mistake) with

o conf defaults

HTH.

[Anonymous Monk]

Thank you very much for step by step instructions. I am a perl / Linux newbie and was trying to get some perl modules installed for past 2 days. Even though my firewall was allowing ftp, somehow I couldn't download the required modules using ftp. As soon as i added https to my cpan config file, things worked flawlessly. Thanks again

[Anonymous Monk]

Um. . .if you could get to a CPAN shell without going through this we wouldn't be having this conversation, right?

[Anonymous Monk]

after much frustration, the following worked for me:

1. cpan <-- answer "no" to initial setup.
   This allows (auto configured) Config.pm file (see below) to be initialised. Previously I think this file had "1;" or something helpful in it!
2. I then added:
   

     'dontload_hash' => {"Net::FTP" => 1, "LWP" =>1 }, # disable Net::FTP
   + and LWP which usually hang
   to: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm - see section:
   $CPAN::Config = {
   ...
   

   but this alone did not seem to do the job. I'm still not sure if this step had any effect.
3. (in cpan shell)

   o conf urllist http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN http://cpan.perl.org
   o conf commit
   quit
   

worked for me - thanks!

20100528 Janitored by Corion: Added formatting, code tags, as per Writeup Formatting Tips

[Anonymous Monk]

So I did ... # perl -MCPAN -e 'shell' And then ... cpan> o conf urllist http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN http://cpan.perl.org cpan> exit Terminal does not support GetHistory. Lockfile removed. But when I do # cpan I still get ... Fetching with Net::FTP: ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/MIRRORED.BY Fetching with Net::FTP ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/MIRRORED.BY.gz