gnutar is available from the Elkins repository to replace the limited tar that comes with a fresh Maemo install.

Sadly, that repository does not have a gnuzip.

I tried entering the cpan tool and setting the gzip option to null with

o conf gzip ''

(That's two single-quotes, not one double quote.) My hope was that the cpan tool would skip over gzip and use a different tool. No joy. I was successful in zero-ing out the field. But the cpan tool went ahead and tried it anyway.

I'm out of time. ToDo: 1)find a proper gzip build for maemo, 2)try a manual install with the newly installed 'make'.