getting perl to talk to postgres

I am trying to get perl to talk to postgres but the installation of DBI
is proving to be a headache.   I am installing DBI-1.14, but when I run
"perl Makefile.PL" as the postgres user, I get the following error :

[postgres@cr833060-a DBI-1.14]$ perl Makefile.PL
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for DBI
Unable to open MakeMaker.tmp: No such file or directory at
/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm line 756.

I read in a previous posting addressing a similar problem that it could
be because the user (postgres) does not have permission to write to the
directory containing the perl source.  I have used "chown" to make sure
postgres can write to that directory but I get the same error.  Can
anyone advise me on how to get the makefile to work?

system specs:  RedHat 7.0;    Postgres 7.0.2;    DBI-1.14;    Perl,
v5.6.0 built for i386-linux .

Thanks in advance for any help.
Frederick.