While it’s very easy to install hsxkpasswd onto your system from CPAN – it’s literally just one command (see below) – it requires administrator access to the machine.

sudo cpan Crypt::HSXKPasswd

This is all well and good if you have administrator access and are sure you want the module installed system-wide. But, what if you don’t have admin access, or, what if you just want to experiment with the module in your own home directory? The answer is perlbrew, a system for running custom versions of Perl inside your home directory. No need for sudo, and what ever you install with perlbrew is entirely contained within your home directory. If you already have perlbrew installed and configured with a version of Perl greater than or equal to 5.16, you can skip to the final step. If not, you’ll need to make your way through all the steps.

Step 1 – Install perlbrew Into Your Home Dir

There are a few different ways of installing perlbrew, but I find the following method the simplest:

curl -L http://install.perlbrew.pl | bash

That should install perlbrew into your home directory, and it should tell you to append some code to the end of your ~/.bash_profile file, which you can do with the following command:

echo 'source ~/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc' >> ~/.bash_profile

Once that’s done, close your Terminal window and open a new one (this is to pick up the new environment variables defined in ~/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc). You’ll know the install has been successful if you can run the perlbrew command:

perlbrew version

Step 2 – Install a Compatible Version of Perl into perlbrew

The joy of perlbrew is that you can have as many versions of Perl installed at any one time as you like, and you can then switch between them with the perlbrew command.

You can install Crypt::HSXKpasswd, and hence the hsxkpasswd terminal command, into any version of Perl greater than or equal to 5.16.

The following command will install Perl 5.16 into perlbrew:

perlbrew install perl-5.16.0

Go off and make yourself a cup of your favourite beverage – this will take a while! 🙂

Once the install finally finishes, you can activate that version of perl (just on your account) with the command:

perlbrew switch perl-5.16.0

It’s important to note that if at any stage you want to disable perlbrew and get back to the default system version of perl, the command to do so is:

perlbrew off

Step 3 – Enable the perlbrew CPAN Client

If you haven’t already done so, enable the perlbrew CPAN client cpanm with the command:

perlbrew install-cpanm

Step 4 – Install Crypt::HSXKPasswd

Once you have perlbrew installed and configured with a compatible version of perl, you can install Crypt::HSXKPasswd with the following simple command:

cpanm Crypt::HSXKPasswd

You’ll know it’s worked if you can run the hsxkpasswd terminal command:

hsxkpasswd --version