Your first suggestion worked out just fine. No problems there at all. I was able to do 'touch xyz' and it created the file without a hitch. So I tried the strace and came back with a 25M file, of which I searched for a permissions issue and it came back with this:

15290 open("/etc/shadow", O_RDONLY)     = -1 EACCES (Permission denied
+)
15290 stat64("/home/wright/.libnetrc", 0x8121b60) = -1 ENOENT (No such
+ file or directory)
15290 stat64("utils/Fcntl.pmc", 0xbfffd5e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file 
+or directory)
15290 open("utils/Fcntl.pm", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No suc
+h file or directory)
15290 stat64("/home/wright/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i686-linux/Fcntl.
+pmc", 0xbfffd5e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 open("/home/wright/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i686-linux/Fcntl.pm
+", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 stat64("/home/wright/lib/perl­5/site_perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pmc", 0xbf
+ffd5e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 open("/home/wright/lib/perl­5/site_perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm", O_RDONL
+Y|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 stat64("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/Fcntl.pmc", 0xbfffd5e0) 
+= -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
15290 open("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/Fcntl.pm", O_RDONLY|O_LARG
+EFILE) = 4
15290 ioctl(4, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE, 0xbfffd3e0) = -1 ENOTTY (Inappropr
+iate ioctl for device)
15290 _llseek(4, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR)      = 0
15290 brk(0x8499000)                    = 0x8499000
15290 read(4, "package Fcntl;\n\n=head1 NAME\n\nFcn"..., 4096) = 4096
15290 brk(0x849a000)                    = 0x849a000
15290 read(4, "SENFMT\t\t\n\t\t     S_IFMT S_IMODE\n "..., 4096) = 102
+6
15290 brk(0x849b000)                    = 0x849b000
15290 brk(0x849c000)                    = 0x849c000
15290 brk(0x849d000)                    = 0x849d000
15290 brk(0x849e000)                    = 0x849e000
15290 brk(0x849f000)                    = 0x849f000
15290 read(4, "", 4096)                 = 0
15290 close(4)                          = 0
15290 brk(0x84a0000)                    = 0x84a0000
15290 stat64("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so", {s
+t_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=11256, ...}) = 0
15290 stat64("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs", {s
+t_mode=S_IFREG|0444, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
15290 open("/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so", O_RD
+ONLY) = 4
15290 read(4, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\260\t\0
+"..., 1024) = 1024
15290 fstat64(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0555, st_size=11256, ...}) = 0
15290 old_mmap(NULL, 14180, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 4, 0) = 
+0x2d6000
15290 mprotect(0x2d9000, 1892, PROT_NONE) = 0
15290 old_mmap(0x2d9000, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_F
+IXED, 4, 0x2000) = 0x2d9000
15290 close(4)                          = 0
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Hopefully I've provided enough of a snippet there that it makes sense to you, because unfortunately it's left me more confused than when I started. I would think that since the CPAN shell is running in my local directory it should be able to create the directories it needs or am I wrong in that?

I've tried to even install some of the pre-requisites *before* trying Crypt::OpenPGP but when I then try to install the module, it seems to be saying that the pre-requisites that I've already (I thought) installed aren't there which makes no sense as they seem to have installed with no errors.

Finally, the df command returned:

Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1            198980892 129116736  69864156  65% /
[download]

so I would think that I've got plenty of room to install all that I'm trying to do, don't I?