I am trying to help an inexperienced user at long distance. She is attempting to install various modules using CPAN under Mac OS X (10.3). She uses the command sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install some::module'. There is no shortage of disk space.

No matter what module -- specifically requested, or unsatisfied prerequisite -- CPAN tries to install, it always fails the exact same way, like this:

Writing Makefile for Compress::Zlib
-- NOT OK

I think the "Writing Makefile for X" message comes from flush() in MakeMakefile.pm, but I have NO idea where the "NOT OK" comes from. The only other error messages follow on from that,
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

Please can somebody tell give me some possible causes for this error -- OR suggest some debugging or tracing steps?

Thanks,
Dave Cortesi