cpan configuration wrong - how to change?

Question

I seem to have misconfigured spam and am now trying to change it. I read elsewhere to remove /root/.cpam, which I did but that did not help to get me the initiation dialog.

When I type into the console o config, I do get:

perl -MCPAN -e shell
Terminal does not support AddHistory.

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.7602)
ReadLine support available (try 'install Bundle::CPAN')

cpan> o conf
CPAN::Config options from /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN/Config.pm:
commit             Commit changes to disk
defaults           Reload defaults from disk
init               Interactive setting of all options

build_cache        10
build_dir          /home/andy/sw/bugzilla-4.0.1/install DateTime/build
cache_metadata     1
cpan_home          /home/andy/sw/bugzilla-4.0.1/install DateTime
dontload_hash
ftp                /usr/bin/ftp
ftp_proxy
getcwd             cwd
gpg                /usr/bin/gpg
gzip               /usr/bin/gzip
histfile           /home/andy/sw/bugzilla-4.0.1/install DateTime/histfile
histsize           100
http_proxy
inactivity_timeout 0
index_expire       1
inhibit_startup_message 0
keep_source_where  /home/andy/sw/bugzilla-4.0.1/install DateTime/sources
lynx
make               /usr/bin/make
make_arg
make_install_arg
makepl_arg
ncftpget           /usr/bin/ncftpget
no_proxy
pager              less
prerequisites_policy ask
scan_cache         atstart
shell              /bin/bash
tar                /bin/tar
term_is_latin      1
unzip              /usr/bin/unzip
urllist
    ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/languages/perl/
wget               /usr/bin/wget


cpan>

Obviously I did something wrong while I tried to install the DateTime module.

How can I fix that? I am on suse 10.3

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 14 '11 at 15:35

Excerpt from man CPAN follows:

The configuration dialog can be started any time later again by issuing the command o conf init in the CPAN shell. A subset of the configuration dialog can be run by issuing o conf init WORD where WORD is any valid config variable or a regular expression.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '23 at 05:52

The CPAN.pm config is kept in ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm and you can just edit that file.

If you'd like to change the CPAN.pm config through the shell. Run cpan with no argument to enter the shell. From there, o conf will show you all of the options. o conf OPTION will show you the current value for something, and o conf OPTION VALUE will set a new value. When you are done, use o conf commit to save your changes. See CPAN::FirstTime for details on the options.

$ cpan
Terminal does not support AddHistory.

To fix that, maybe try>  install Term::ReadLine::Perl


cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v2.33)
Enter 'h' for help.

cpan[1]> o conf
$CPAN::Config options from /Users/brian/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm:
    commit             [Commit changes to disk]
    defaults           [Reload defaults from disk]
    help               [Short help about 'o conf' usage]
    init               [Interactive setting of all options]

    ...
    use_sqlite         [0]
    username           undef
    version_timeout    [15]
    wait_list          undef
    wget               []
    yaml_load_code     [0]
    yaml_module        [YAML]


cpan[2]> o conf use_sqlite
    use_sqlite         [0]

cpan[3]> o conf use_sqlite 1
    use_sqlite         [1]
Please use 'o conf commit' to make the config permanent!


cpan[4]> o conf commit
commit: wrote '/Users/brian/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm'

cpan configuration wrong - how to change?

2 Answers2