I just did this because I am a bad boy. I had to install SQLite on an RH9/perl5.8.1 system and it refused! (And said it had duplicate driver files in the tree..). So if you are talking ancient installs and who knows where that came from, watching make won't hack it.

I solved it all by uninstalling DBI and cpan install Bundle::DBI. Whew.

How did I uninstall? Followed the instructions google gave me.. namely search and destroy. In my paranoia I don't destroy and will never know where things should go back if everything breaks, so..

I ran locate DBI.pm to find the various places it hides in the perl tree. At one point I think/hope I did a find . |grep DBI.pm since locate was not up to date but.. okay so I found a bunch of paths ending in DBI.pm.

Basically I renamed all folders called DBI to DBI_old and all DBI.pm files renamed to DBI_old.pm without moving them anywhere. This salved my paranoia (I could grep for DBI_old later on) and my machine is happy. I am wanting to upgrade my perl though.. my other machine is a 5.8.8. (on which various modules like SQL::Statement discover make tests need patching).

Hope this helps. I just pondered the potential merits of saving records of installation sessions on a per-session basis for roll-back but my mind almost melted down. Have a nice day!