cpan configuration error

[Florian Diesch]

Dave Howorth <dhoworth at mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> I'm having trouble trying to install Perl modules from CPAN using
> lucid's cpan command. The trouble is that I can't get cpan configured.
>
> I start cpan and it starts asking lots of config questions and then it
> gets to a bit about proxies and immediately afterwards goes weird:
>
>  If you're accessing the net via proxies, you can specify them in the
>  CPAN configuration or via environment variables. The variable in
>  the $CPAN::Config takes precedence.
>
>   <ftp_proxy>
>  Your ftp_proxy? []
>
>   <http_proxy>
>  Your http_proxy? []
>
>   <no_proxy>
>  Your no_proxy? []
>
>  CPAN needs access to at least one CPAN mirror.
>
>  As you did not allow me to connect to the internet you need to supply
>  a valid CPAN URL now.
>
>  Please enter the URL of your CPAN mirror  ^C
>
>
> But it never asked me about connecting to the internet, so I have no
> idea what it's on about!
>
> Has anybody seen this before?

If you are running cpan for the first time it will ask

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
If you have never defined your own C<urllist> in your configuration
then C<CPAN.pm> will be hesitant to use the built in default sites for
downloading. It will ask you once per session if a connection to the
internet is OK and only if you say yes, it will try to connect. But to
avoid this question, you can choose your favorite download sites once
and get away with it. Or, if you have no favorite download sites
answer yes to the following question.

 <connect_to_internet_ok>
If no urllist has been chosen yet, would you prefer CPAN.pm to connect
to the built-in default sites without asking? (yes/no)? [no] 
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

and only ask for a CPAN URL if you answer "no" (which is the default)
here. You can edit ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm to correct this.



   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/doc/emacs/>