cpan "couldn't untar"

[Peter Michaux]

Hi,

I am trying to get the cpan command line program functional but I am
seeing an untar error

-----------

# cpan install Bundle::CPAN
CPAN: Storable loaded ok
Going to read /root/.cpan/Metadata
Database was generated on Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:06:45 GMT
Running install for module install
Running make for J/JU/JUNOS/junoscript-perl-6.4I0.tar.gz
CPAN: Digest::MD5 loaded ok
CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok
Checksum for /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/J/JU/JUNOS/junoscript-perl-6.4I0.tar.gz
ok
Scanning cache /root/.cpan/build for sizes
Uncompressed /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/J/JU/JUNOS/junoscript-perl-6.4I0.tar.gz
successfully
Using Tar:/bin/tar xvf
/root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/J/JU/JUNOS/junoscript-perl-6.4I0.tar:
Couldn't untar /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/J/JU/JUNOS/junoscript-perl-6.4I0.tar

-----------

I can manually untar this file

# /bin/tar xvf /root/.cpan/sources/authors/id/J/JU/JUNOS/junoscript-perl-6.4I0.tar
# ls -l junoscript-perl-junoscript-perl-6.4I0
drwxr-xr-x 6 2298 705 4096 2004-08-25 21:40 junoscript-perl-6.4I0/

I don't know who the user 2298 or group 705 are.

------------

No matter what I try to install or how it seems to result in this same
untar problem. I've tried

perl -MCPAN -e "install 'Bundle::CPAN'"

I've also tried installing different modules from CPAN.

-----------

Some information about my system:

# cat /etc/{debian_version,issue.net}
4.0
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0

# cpan -v
cpan script version 1.03
CPAN.pm version 1.7602

# tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.16

# which tar
/bin/tar

-----------


Here is my cpan configuration

cpan> o conf
CPAN::Config options from /etc/perl/CPAN/Config.pm:
commit Commit changes to disk
defaults Reload defaults from disk
init Interactive setting of all options

build_cache 10
build_dir /root/.cpan/build
cache_metadata 1
cpan_home /root/.cpan
cpan_version_check 1
dontload_hash
ftp
ftp_proxy
getcwd cwd
gpg /usr/bin/gpg
gzip /bin/gzip
histfile /root/.cpan/histfile
histsize 100
http_proxy
inactivity_timeout 0
index_expire 1
inhibit_startup_message 0
keep_source_where /root/.cpan/sources
lynx
make /usr/bin/make
make_arg
make_install_arg
makepl_arg INSTALLDIRS=site
ncftp
ncftpget
no_proxy
pager /usr/bin/less
prerequisites_policy ask
scan_cache atstart
shell /bin/bash
tar /bin/tar
term_is_latin 1
unzip
urllist
ftp://cpan.sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/CPAN/
ftp://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/pub/CPAN/
wget /usr/bin/wget

-----------

Help sorting this out is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Peter

[Andreas J. Koenig]

Post by Peter Michaux
Help sorting this out is greatly appreciated.

My gut feeling is that it is a permission problem. CPAN 1.7602 is
*quite* old and had no good error messages for perrmission problems.
So if you can somehow install stable 1.9205 or developer release
1.92_62 manually and then retry I'd expect the error messages will
give you more clue.