This user absolutely has devtools installed. Or so she tells me.

However, I do notice that when I have her do cpan> o conf the only difference between her output and mine is the line make which in my system says /usr/bin/make and in hers, is blank.

Let us suppose that she doesn't have /usr/bin/make -- in what way would this cause the consistent error, quote

Writing Makefile for what::ever
NOT OK

Is /usr/bin/make being invoked here?

I should say, that I had her run the test after cpan> debug all and there were no additional error messages.