hi, I'm back on track, trying to debugf this beast. - Modperl is compiled _statically_ into apache. - DBI::mysql works great from CGI scripts. - There seem to be no user problems: the user the script runs under is allowed full control on /tmp, so it should be able to open the socket. - Tom Brown was thinking of a bug in DBD. I don't really know. The string comes from: $dbh->errstr, and looks like: ase Selected at /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/intercosta/htmlf/dbi1.netizen.ehtml line 29. and could still be a mysqld error msg, but I could not find it in the docs. In fact, I've been trying to track where in the code is the msg, but could no find it ('ase' is such a common string). Does anyone have an idea where/how should I go on? martin -- - Martin Langhoff @ S C I M Multimedia Technology - - http://www.scim.net | God is real until - - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | declared integer -