Can I access Postgre database on another machine using Perl, DBI, and DBD::Pg?

• My machine: Linux RHEL 5.5.56 (64-bit), Perl 5.8.8. Postgres is not on this machine. But I can ping the Postgres machine no problem. And my machine can obviously install Perl modules from CPAN on the internet.
• 'uname -a' returns: Linux xxx 2.6.18-371.8.1.el5PAE #1 SMP Fri Mar 28 06:00:03 EDT 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
• Other machine has Postgres 8.4.
• I'm new to installing and using any DBI module. Detailed beginner instructions are needed.
• I have root access to my Linux machine.
• I think yum reports that I have 'postgresql-libs.i386' installed. `yum install | grep postgres` returns: 'postgresql-libs.i386 8.1.23-10.el5_10 installed'

Is this what I need? This is on my system.

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   12 May  1 20:05 /usr/lib/libpq.so.4 -> libpq.so.4.1*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 130K Feb 27 07:36 /usr/lib/libpq.so.4.1*

Goal: I want to grab data from a Postgres server on another machine. I already have a db username, password, IP for the db machine.

Using cpanm I installed DBI just fine, no errors. When I installed DBD::Pg I got an error. CPAN error log follows:

cpanm (App::cpanminus) 1.6941 on perl 5.008008 built for i386-linux-thread-multi
Work directory is /root/.cpanm/work/1405531191.27414
You have make /usr/bin/make
You have LWP 6.04
You have /bin/tar: tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1
You have /usr/bin/unzip
Searching DBD::Pg on cpanmetadb ...
--> Working on DBD::Pg
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/T/TU/TURNSTEP/DBD-Pg-3.3.0.tar.gz
-> OK
Unpacking DBD-Pg-3.3.0.tar.gz
Entering DBD-Pg-3.3.0
Checking configure dependencies from META.yml
Checking if you have version 0 ... Yes (0.88)
Checking if you have DBI 1.614 ... Yes (1.631)
Configuring DBD-Pg-3.3.0
Running Makefile.PL
Path to pg_config?
No POSTGRES_HOME defined, cannot find automatically
Configuring DBD::Pg 3.3.0
-> N/A
-> FAIL Configure failed for DBD-Pg-3.3.0. See /root/.cpanm/work/1405531191.27414/build.log for details.

• Is it even possible for me to get data from the Postgres db on another machine?
• Does anyone have a link to instructions on how to do this? I've already been googling stuff, reading stuff on CPAN, Stackoverflow and Perlmonks with no results.
• FAQ at http://dbi.tiddlyspot.com/ has no info specific to installing DBD::Pg.
• If I install Postgres via yum, will the installation overwrite any files, like libraries? If so, which ones? We do have other applications we use on this machine.

If I get this working, my first step is to show just very basic info about the DBI driver. Next step would be to show a few fields from one table in a SELECT statement.

I won't be returning millions of records, but returning 100 records is certainly in the ballpark.

Thank you!

If you use the package that is already built and available for your system, then you won't have any of these problems.

$ sudo yum install perl-DBD-Pg

... Lots of output snipped ...

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package              Arch        Version              Repository          Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 perl-DBD-Pg          x86_64      1.49-4.el5_8         centos-update      115 k
Installing for dependencies:
 postgresql-libs      x86_64      8.1.23-6.el5_8       centos-update      197 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install       2 Package(s)
Upgrade       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 312 k
Is this ok [y/N]: 

My example uses Centos 5.8.8, but it should work just the same for RHEL.