How can I install cpanm and local::lib if I can't write to ~/? [closed]

Question

As with many people whose sites are hosted on shared servers, I do not have root access, and the hosting company will not install Perl modules at the request of users.

Unfortunately, I also do not have write privileges to the ~/ folder, only to certain subfolders (such as ~/cgi-bin/).

I've attempted the solution suggested here, changing ~/perl5 to ~/cgi-bin/perl5 (which I created), but I keep getting this error:

"Can't write to cpanm home '~/.cpanm': You should fix it with chown/chmod first."

The problem is, as I stated, I don't have write privileges to ~/.

Is there some way to tell the installer to use ~/cgi-bin/.cpanm instead? I've tried to figure it out by searching on here and elsewhere on the internet, but I'm starting to bash my head against the wall.

EDIT : So I've tried the suggestion by Steven below, using this command:

HOME=$HOME/cgi-bin cpanm local::lib

Now, cpanm successfully runs and tries to install the module, but has numerous warnings throughout the installation and ultimately fails (presumably something is still trying to write to a forbidden folder??).

Here are some sample warnings:

Warning: prerequisite CPAN 1.82 not found. We have 1.7601.

Warning: prerequisite ExtUtils::Install 1.43 not found. We have 1.32.

Warning: prerequisite ExtUtils::MakeMaker 6.42 not found. We have 6.17.

Warning: prerequisite Module::Build 0.36 not found.

Warning: You do not have permissions to install into /usr/lib64/perl5/5.8.5/x86_64-linux-thread-multi at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/ExtUtils/Install.pm line 114.

mkdir /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/App: Permission denied at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/ExtUtils/Install.pm line 176

make: *** [pure_perl_install] Error 255

Answer 1

~ is just a shorthand way of accessing the environment variable $HOME, so you should be able to do something like export HOME=$HOME/cgi-bin to move your effective home directory down into some directory you have write permissions for. This will affect many things, however, so be careful.