Broken CPAN.pm setup

dvergin has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I recently upgraded my perl installation from 5.6.1 to 5.8.0 (a default build from perl-5.8.0.tar.gz on Redhat 7.3). In the process I "cleaned up" a few things (it seemed like a good idea at the time). Now the setup for CPAN.pm is broken.

I can only install modules that I already have older versions of.
I consistently get the message "Strange distribution name [distname]" where 'distname' can be any module (installed or otherwise).
The 'i' function (display about anything) only tells me about what is installed -- not what is available on the server.

I have re-installed and reloaded CPAN.pm with no improvement.

Command line invocations like "perl -MCPAN -e 'install some_new_module'" also fail.

My efforts at reading through CPAN.pm, Googling, and PM Supersearch have produced nothing helpful.

What's broken? How do I fix this?

Here follows a transcript in which I first turn on DEBUG in the hope that it may be of help. (Side question: Is this the proper way to invoke DEBUG mode?)

[root@localhost root]# perl -MCPAN -e shell

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.70)
ReadLine support enabled

cpan> ! $CPAN::DEBUG = 1;
cpan> i DBI
Debug(CPAN:-e,1,[CPAN::shell|1|UNDEF|UNDEF|UNDEF|0|UUUUUUUUUUUU]): lin
+e[i|DBI]
CPAN: Storable loaded ok
Going to read /root/.cpan/Metadata
  Database was generated on Mon, 12 May 2003 01:42:45 GMT
CPAN: LWP::UserAgent loaded ok
Fetching with LWP:
  ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok
Fetching with LWP:
  ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/02packages.details.t
+xt.gz
Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz
  Database was generated on Tue, 13 May 2003 13:42:47 GMT
Debug(CPAN:/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/CPAN.pm,3329,[CPAN::all_objects|
+1|1|UNDEF|UNDEF|0|UUUUUUUUUUUU]): mgr[CPAN=HASH(0x848cf08)] class[CPA
+N::Module]
Debug(CPAN:/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/CPAN.pm,3329,[CPAN::all_objects|
+1|1|UNDEF|UNDEF|0|UUUUUUUUUUUU]): mgr[CPAN=HASH(0x848cf08)] class[CPA
+N::Bundle]
Debug(CPAN:/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/CPAN.pm,3329,[CPAN::all_objects|
+1|1|UNDEF|UNDEF|0|UUUUUUUUUUUU]): mgr[CPAN=HASH(0x848cf08)] class[CPA
+N::Distribution]
Fetching with LWP:
  ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Going to write /root/.cpan/Metadata
Strange distribution name [DBI]
Bundle          Bundle::DBI     (T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.35.tar.gz)
Module          DBI             (T/TI/TIMB/DBI-1.35.tar.gz)
2 items found

cpan> i Palm
Debug(CPAN:-e,1,[CPAN::shell|1|UNDEF|UNDEF|UNDEF|0|UUUUUUUUUUUU]): lin
+e[i|Palm]
Strange distribution name [Palm]
No objects found of any type for argument Palm

cpan> i DBD
Debug(CPAN:-e,1,[CPAN::shell|1|UNDEF|UNDEF|UNDEF|0|UUUUUUUUUUUU]): lin
+e[i|DBD]
Strange distribution name [DBD]
No objects found of any type for argument DBD

cpan>
[download]

TIA,
David

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