Perl CPAN authentication needed to install package but no proxy used

Question

When I try to install a perl package as Data::Dumper with CPAN, I get the following error :

Reading '/home/myHome/.cpan/Metadata'
Database was generated on Sat, 09 Mar 2013 07:06:56 GMT
Fetching with LWP:
ftp://cpan.cict.fr/pub/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz

Authentication needed!
 (Note: to permanently configure username and password run
   o conf username your_username
   o conf password your_password
 )
Username:

BUT I dont have any proxy ! So why do I have to give a username and a password ? When I try on another PC with the same OS (Ubuntu 10.04) there is no problem, it works... Thanks

Answer 1

You're using a mirror that appears to be password protected (you can test this by hitting the URL in your question with wget or a similar tool). This is, most likely, a bug with the mirror.

Configure your system to use a different mirror.