#2 configure script fails while generating password

[Richard Jacob]

Redhat linux 9.0 up2date running perl 5.8.0 and
Crypt-Blowfish-2.09

fails after this question :
You will also have to specify a non-empty password for
bugs: mypassword
input must be 8 bytes long at
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/Crypt/Blowfish.pm
line 56, <STDIN> line 9.