Force CPAN to download via HTTP (skipping proxy)

Simplest way of having it not use FTP is to shove HTTP URLs on the front of your urllist - or replace it completely like sebastionopilla said. You can do it from inside the cpan shell too:

o conf urllist unshift http://some.cpan.mirror/here/ 

You can use

o conf urllist - o conf urllist shift 

to empty it first if you wish.

Use

o conf no_proxy 1 

to turn off the proxy.

Use

o conf commit 

to save the config

Try putting only HTTP URLs in your CPAN's Config.pm file, like:

'urllist' => [q[http://cpan.cict.fr/], q[http://cpan.enstimac.fr/], q[http://mirrors4.kernel.org/cpan/]], 

I routinely do this and as far as I can see there's no FTP traffic to any CPAN mirror.

Try these:

1. Before running cpan: export -n http_proxy
2. In the cpan shell: o conf http_proxy ''
3. To save your modified cpan config: o conf commit

That will disable any http proxy CPAN is configured to use.

cpan[1]> o conf /proxy/ cpan[2]> o conf no_proxy 1 cpan[3]> o conf commit 

Set proxy username and password:

cpan[4]> o conf proxy_user your_username cpan[5]> o conf proxy_pass your_password cpan[6]> o conf commit 

If you don't want to use a cpan shell, you can also edit your cpan config file with a text editor, in unix systems it's here:

~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm

Of course, the field to change in your particular question is 'http_proxy'.