fixing cpan by resetting it
I believe cpan
maintains its files in the directory of the user that ran it. So if it was root then they'd be in /root/.cpan
. You can just blow this directory away completely.
Alternatively you can re-run the "wizard" that asks you all those CPAN questions using this command:
$ cpan o conf init
Removing /root/.cpan
certainly helps, but if you want to go back to the first launch message, you need to remove CPAN/Config.pm
. To find out where it is, try:
perldoc -l CPAN
i.e.:
ls -l `dirname $(perldoc -l CPAN)`/CPAN/Config.pm