Support Start > Web Hosting Technical Information > Installing and Configuring Custom Scripts > Perl Scripts > CPAN Modules

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If you use Perl scripts, you’ll find our servers have many Perl CPAN modules already installed, but you can also add your own “local” modules.

For example, let’s say your script needs the Text::Lorem module, but you find it isn’t preinstalled when you try running this script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Text::Lorem;
print Text::Lorem->new()->words(5);

... and get the error “Can't locate Text/Lorem.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Text::Lorem module)”.

To fix this, you can install it for your account from the command-line shell using the cpan command. First run this in your shell session to tell cpan to save any installed modules locally:

eval `perl -Mlocal::lib`

Then run:

cpan Text::Lorem

The first time you run “cpan”, it will ask you “Would you like to configure as much as possible automatically?” — you should choose the default “yes”.

New modules will be installed by default in the /perl5/lib/perl5 directory of your home directory, so you then need to add this line to your Perl scripts:

use lib '/home/ex/example.com/perl5/lib/perl5';

So the complete script will now look like:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use lib '/home/ex/example.com/perl5/lib/perl5';
use Text::Lorem;
print Text::Lorem->new()->words(5);

After doing that, the script works.