cpan.org Metadata and modules files not being updated

[email protected] (James E Keenan) Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:31:44 -0400
Newsgroups perl.cpan.workers
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Having a problem which first becomes apparent running the 'cpan' shell, 
but then points toward the cpan.org infrastructure.

Yesterday I installed perl-5.43.9 on by two servers (Linux and FreeBSD). 
  Here I present data from FreeBSD:
```
[perlmonger: perl-5.43.9] $ ls -l bin/perl bin/cpan
-rwxr-xr-x  1 jkeenan jkeenan    8418 Mar 20 14:56 bin/cpan
-rwxr-xr-x  2 jkeenan jkeenan 4080848 Mar 20 14:56 bin/perl
  $ ./bin/perl -v | head -2 | tail -1
This is perl 5, version 43, subversion 9 (v5.43.9) built for 
amd64-freebsd-thread-multi
$ ./bin/cpan -v
./bin/cpan script version 1.678, CPAN.pm version 2.38
```
I then installed Task::CPAN::Reporter against that perl (including a 
trial release of Net-SSLeay-1.95_001) and then proceeded to generate 
CPANtester reports for over 500 distros on each platform.

I subsequently received email indicating that some of the problems I 
reported had already been fixed.  I went back to those new perl 
installations and tried to use the `cpan` shell to install the updated 
distros.
```
$ cd $TESTINGDIR/perl-5.43.9
$ ./bin/cpan

cpan[1]> reload index
Reading '/home/jkeenan/.cpan/Metadata'
   Database was generated on Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:41:01 GMT
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Reading '/home/jkeenan/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz'
............................................................................DONE
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz
Reading '/home/jkeenan/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz'
   Database was generated on Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:41:01 GMT
Warning: This index file is 39 days old.
   Please check the host you chose as your CPAN mirror for staleness.
   I'll continue but problems seem likely to happen.
............................................................................DONE
Fetching with HTTP::Tiny:
https://cpan.org/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Reading '/home/jkeenan/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz'
DONE
Writing /home/jkeenan/.cpan/Metadata
```
Note these two lines in the output above:
```
   Database was generated on Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:41:01 GMT

   Database was generated on Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:41:01 GMT
Warning: This index file is 39 days old.
   Please check the host you chose as your CPAN mirror for staleness.
   I'll continue but problems seem likely to happen.
```
I get a console beep when that line `Warning: Ths index file is 39 days 
old.` appears.

Today, 21 Mar 2026, is 40 days after 09 Feb 2026.  Now my *local* CPAN 
metadata files are up-to-date:
```
$ ls -l ~/.cpan/Metadata ~/.cpan/sources/modules ~/.cpan/sources/authors
/
-rw-r--r--  1 jkeenan jkeenan 44358810 Mar 21 13:05 
/home/jkeenan/.cpan/Metadata

/home/jkeenan/.cpan/sources/authors/:
total 273
-rw-r--r--   1 jkeenan jkeenan 250949 Mar 21 13:05 01mailrc.txt.gz
drwxr-xr-x  28 jkeenan jkeenan     28 May 20  2021 id

/home/jkeenan/.cpan/sources/modules:
total 2549
-rw-r--r--  1 jkeenan jkeenan 2592931 Mar 21 13:05 02packages.details.txt.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 jkeenan jkeenan     248 Mar 21 13:05 03modlist.data.gz
```
So what it appears is happening is that the files on cpan.org are 
out-of-date:
```
https://cpan.org/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz

https://cpan.org/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz
```
The problem appears to be that **inside** the local 
`02packages.details.txt.gz` file, the `Last-Updated` entry is still 09 
Feb 2026.
```
$ zcat ~/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz | head
File:         02packages.details.txt
URL:          http://www.cpan.org/modules/02packages.details.txt
Description:  Package names found in directory $CPAN/authors/id/
Columns:      package name, version, path
Intended-For: Automated fetch routines, namespace documentation.
Written-By:   PAUSE version 1.005
Line-Count:   270470
Last-Updated: Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:41:01 GMT

A1z::Html                          0.04  C/CE/CEEJAY/A1z-Html-0.04.tar.gz
```
So every time I say `reload index` inside the `cpan` shell, I'm getting 
the same 40-day-old data every time.  I note, for instance, that in 
02packages I don't see the latest version of a CPAN distro which I 
uploaded on 03 March.
```
$ zgrep -n 'Business::Tax::US' ~/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.detail
s.txt.gz
30869:Business::Tax::US::Form_1040::Worksheets 0.07 
J/JK/JKEENAN/Business-Tax-US-Form_1040-Worksheets-0.07.tar.gz
```
... whereas metacpan.org correctly has version 0.08 uploaded on March 3.
```
https://metacpan.org/pod/Business::Tax::US::Form_1040::Worksheets
```
Where should this be further reported?