Hi,

  In case anyone else runs into this error, it was a quick fix for me.

  I installed CEAN 1.3 (from cean_base.tar.gz).  I was able to start just fine, but I couldn’t intall any packages:

  $ ./start.sh
  Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.5.5 [source] [async-threads:0] [hipe]  [kernel-poll:false]

  Eshell V5.5.5 (abort with ^G)
  1> cean:install(yaws).
  error: tools not downloaded: genserver_timedout
  error: ssl not downloaded: genserver_timedout
  error: mnesia not downloaded: genserver_timedout
  yaws was not installed. failed to install all dependencies.
  ok
  2>

The problem was that I installed using sudo:

  $ sudo tar zxvf /tmp/cean_base.tar.gz

But when I ran the script, I was a normal user, so (I’m guessing) I didn’t have write permission to some file/directory in the install. I reinstalled w/o the sudo and it seems to be working fine now.

It might be nice to have a better error message in this case.