Setting Passive Mode for Perl/CPAN Topic:Perl   Date: 2003-06-08 Printer Friendly:

One problem with the default install of the CPAN shell is that if you need passive FTP to get through your firewall, the CPAN shell won't work. Here is the behavior:

. . . Invalid PORT. Retrying. --12:26:05-- ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz (try: 8) => `-' Connecting to ftp.perl.org[192.35.244.50]:21... connected. Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in! ==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done. ==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD /pub/CPAN/authors ... done. ==> PORT ... Invalid PORT. Retrying.

Locate libnet.cfg. For us, it is here:

/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/Net/libnet.cfg

Edit the file so that the ftp_int_passiveline is:

{ 'ftp_int_passive' => 1, 'snpp_hosts' => [], 'inet_domain' => undef, 'test_exist' => 1, 'ftp_testhost' => undef, 'daytime_hosts' => [], 'ph_hosts' => [], 'time_hosts' => [], 'smtp_hosts' => [], 'test_hosts' => 1, 'nntp_hosts' => [], 'pop3_hosts' => [], }

For good measure, we also changed our environment:

root@srv-1 root # export FTP_PASSIVE=1 root@srv-1 root # set | grep FTP_PA FTP_PASSIVE=1

Might as well add that to /etc/profile. Now:

root@srv-1 root # perl -MCPAN -e shell . . . Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz LWP not available Fetching with Net::FTP: ftp://archive.progeny.com/CPAN/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz Database was generated on Sun, 08 Jun 2003 09:14:27 GMT HTTP::Date not available There's a new CPAN.pm version (v1.70) available! [Current version is v1.61] You might want to try install Bundle::CPAN reload cpan without quitting the current session. It should be a seamless upgrade while we are running...

Well, that is better.