Troubleshooting cpan

[kj]

When I try to use the cpan command, attempts to fetch files (e.g.
01mailrc.txt.gz) time out. This happens in 2 out of the 3 machines
I've tried it on, all of which live in the same LAN and behind the
same firewall. I can't figure out why cpan works in one of the
machines but not in the others. The two "failing machines" are
entirely different (a SuSE Linux box and an iMac). The machine
where cpan works is another SuSE Linux box.

More confusingly still, I can download 01mailrc.txt.gz from the
"failing machines" if I use wget, which rules out some major
connection problem. Unfortunately, cpan does not emit any diagnostic
to explain why its attempts to download files time out. Why would
cpan fail when wget succeeds on the same machine?

Thanks!

kj

 

[usenet]

More confusingly still, I can download 01mailrc.txt.gz from the
"failing machines" if I use wget

But is your CPAN module configured to use wget as a communication
method? (type 'o conf' in a CPAN shell and see if wget is correctly
defined)

 

[brian d foy]

When I try to use the cpan command, attempts to fetch files (e.g.
01mailrc.txt.gz) time out.

If you have access to the net and this isn't working, I suspect you
have a configuration problem, or are using a bad CPAN mirror. Can you
post your configuration?

$ cpan
cpan> o conf

Thanks,

 

[kj]

Does the machine from which it works have, by any chance, either
an environment variable FTP_PASSIVE set or the option
"ftp_int_passive" enabled in libnet.cfg? If not, has it got
an ftp_proxy environment setting that the others are missing?

Thanks. FTP_PASSIVE is unset in the working machine, and I can't
find a file named libnet.cfg in it, but, be that as it may, setting
the ftp_int_passive option in the MyConfig.pm files of the failing
machines did the trick.

kj