A common question we get from cPanel administrators is whether it’s Ok to remove /home/.cpan since, on many servers, it tends to grow to a size exceeding 1G.  The short answer is yes – that folder is used by cPanel and Perl, and contains perl module installation files.

If you find that yours is occupying too much disk space, delete it, and run the following commands:

perl -MCPAN -e shell

cpan> install Bundle::CPAN>
cpan> reload index
cpan> reload cpan
cpan> exit

/scripts/checkperlmodules –full

CPanel has a internal script for using CPAN to install Perl modules. Learn it and love it:

/scripts/perlinstaller

Most common Perl modules can be installed from WHM ~> Install a Perl Module, or from command line. If you don’t know the name of the Perl module you’re installing, you may want to use the WHM installer instead, as it has a search feature and its usage is pretty self-explanatory.

For command line installations, pass the name of the perl module (case-sensitive) to the installer like so:

/scripts/perlinstaller MD5

/scripts/perlinstaller IO::Compress::Base

If the module is already installed and you need to update or reinstall it, pass –force:

/scripts/perlinstaller –force MD5

Since cPanel 11, you can now also allow your users to install their own perl modules locally in /home/$user/perl (which is automatically added to their Perl module path) so they don’t have to bug you when they need a Perl module, nor to they need SSH access.  You can enable this in WHM ~> Module Installers ~> Perl Module [Manage] . You do need to have compilers enabled for users though, which can be done in WHM ~> Security Center ~> Compilers Tweak .

Sometimes out of nowhere cPanel will just break. You don’t know why, you don’t know when, and you don’t know how…it just happens. In my experience it’s usually when a cPanel update fails for some reason or perl is borked, but either way – it just sucks. This article will go over how to fix a malfunctioning cPanel installation or botched upgrade.