The machine I use (like Danny's) runs RedHat. It is managed by the technology people on campus. But I have root access.
Most of the perl modules needed by webwork were installed (by me) with yum. A few with cpan. Root's .cpan directory shows File::Path was built last summer, when I updated webwork. I recall installing a few modules at that time. I recall a bit of frustration, perhaps that was with File::Path, not sure.
On Oct 30 an update of perl was done with yum (likely automatically). I guess File::Path reverted back to the redhat version at that time. When the machine was rebooted a few days later the webserver would not restart because of the wrong version of File::Path.
I have now installed File::Path into site_perl. I dont think that will get overwritten by future updates.
Thanks form the help, Daryl