as root:

(
apt-get -y update
apt-get -y upgrade
apt-get -y install libc6-dev
apt-get -y install gcc
apt-get -y install emacs21
apt-get -y install subversion
apt-get -y install postgresql
)
<p>
then, adduser thartman
<p>
then, as thartman:
<p>
(
wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/N/NW/NWCLARK/perl-5.8.8.tar.gz
tar -xzvf perl-5.8.8.tar.gz
cd perl-5.8.8
sh Configure -Dprefix=/home/thartman/perlroot/perl -des #make this your home directory
make test
make install
mkdir -p ~/usr/local #used for template toolkit installation
) | tee perlinstall.out

( cat >> ~/.bashrc
export $PATH=~/home/thartman/perlroot/perl/bin:$PATH
export FTP_PASSIVE=1 )

cpan,
  manual configuration? no
  o conf prerequisites_policy follow
  o conf commit
  install cpan
    (i.e., upgrade CPAN)

##</code><code>##

#!/home/thartman/perlroot/perl/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use CPAN;

# Htmlwidget:
# test for Net::DNS::Resolver::Recurse fails on tektonic VPS
# same as reported in http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.cpan.testers/341522
# but we go ahead and use this module anyway
force('install', 'Net::DNS');
install('HTML::Widget');

#goto Digestcolumns;
for my $mod qw(
  Catalyst::Plugin::ConfigLoader
  Catalyst::Plugin::Session::State::Cookie
  Catalyst::Plugin::Static::Simple
  Catalyst::Plugin::StackTrace
  Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication
  Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication::Store::DBIC
  Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication::Credential::Password
  Catalyst::Plugin::Authorization::Roles
  Catalyst::Plugin::Authorization::ACL
  Catalyst::Plugin::Session
  Catalyst::Plugin::Session::Store::FastMmap
  HTML::Widget
  Catalyst::Plugin::HTML::Widget
  Catalyst::View::TT
  Algorithm::C3
  Class::C3
  DBIx::Class
  Catalyst::Model::DBIC::Schema
  Lingua::EN::Inflect::Number
  Catalyst::Action::RenderView
  DBD::Pg
) {
    if ( my $result = install ($mod) ) {
      die "couldn't instal: $mod, result: $result";
    }
    #print "result: $result";
    #die;#die "couldn't install: $mod";
}

Digestcolumns:
#install ('XML::XPath');
install ('IO::Scalar');
install ('Text::RecordParser');
install ('SQL::Translator');
force ( 'install', 'DBIx::Class::DigestColumns');
die;

Cpanplus:
install ('Bundle::CPANPLUS::Dependencies');
install ('Module::Loaded');
install ('Package::Constants');
install ('Test::Harness');
install ('CPANPLUS');

# Module::Signature causes headache, see list posts.
system('rm -f /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Module/Signature.pm');
die;