note snoopy CPAN takes out a lock to make sure that it is only running once. <p> The lock file normally contains a PID of the other CPAN process. It seems that the content of this file has become corrupted and contains null characters. CPAN is then choking when it tries to kill a non-numeric PID. <p> The simple solution is hopefully to remove the ".lock" file before running CPAN. <p> Do the following to find the path to CPAN home. <code> perl -MCPAN::Config -e "print $CPAN::Config->{cpan_home}" </code> Then look for and remove the file named <tt>.lock</tt> under that path. 918387 918387