%general-entities; ]> CPAN automated install of perl modules There is an alternate way of installing the modules using the cpan shell install command. The command automatically downloads the latest source from the CPAN archive for the module and any missing prerequisite modules listed by upstream. Then for each module it extracts it, runs the compilation, the tests and installs it. You still need to install any non-perl dependencies before running the automated installation method. You may wish to clean out the build/ directory after installing, to free up the space. If any post-install actions such as creating a symlink are mentioned, you should also do those. The first time you run cpan, you'll be prompted to enter some information regarding download locations and methods. This information is retained in files located in ~/.cpan. In particular, you may wish to configure it so that is used for the installs, allowing you to build and test as a regular user. The following examples have not used that approach. Start the cpan shell by issuing 'cpan' as the root user. Any module may now be installed from the cpan>  prompt with the command: install <Module::Name> For additional commands and help, issue 'help' from the cpan>  prompt. Alternatively, for scripted or non-interactive installations, use the following syntax as the root user to install one or more modules: cpan -i <Module1::Name> <Module2::Name> Review the cpan.1 man page for additional parameters you can pass to cpan on the command line.