+Parent breaks Oracle connection?

[George L. Roman]

I'm having trouble running RT using the

        PerlOptions +Parent

directive.

My httpd.conf file:

  NameVirtualHost *

  <VirtualHost *>
    ServerName          default.name.com
    DocumentRoot        "/var/www/html"
    <Directory          "/var/www/html">
        Options                 FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride           None
        Order                   allow,deny
        Allow                   from all
    </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>

  <VirtualHost *>
    ServerName          rt.name.com
    DocumentRoot        "/opt/rt3/share/html"
    AddDefaultCharset   UTF-8

    ErrorLog            logs/error_log_rt
    CustomLog           logs/access_log_rt combined

    # This PerlOptions line causes DB connect failure
    #PerlOptions +Parent

    PerlRequire /opt/rt3/bin/webmux.pl

    <Location />
        SetHandler      perl-script
        PerlHandler     RT::Mason
    </Location>
  </VirtualHost>

This config file works great.  I can surf to rt (port 80) and login to
RT.

When I uncomment the

    PerlOptions +Parent

line, however, and restart Apache, I get the following errors:

  DBI connect('ORA001,'rt',...) failed: ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check
  ORACLE_HOME and NLS settings etc.
  at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/DBIx/SearchBuilder/Handle.pm line 106

  Connect Failed ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. (check ORACLE_HOME and NLS
  settings etc.)
  at /opt/rt3/lib/RT.pm line 220

I've placed

    qx,echo $ENV{'ORACLE_HOME'} > /tmp/debug,;
    qx,env > /tmp/debug2,;

and other statements in strategic places throughout the code and have
learned that when running without +Parent, the code can set %ENV and
child processes pick up the changes.  When running with +Parent, child
processes do not see any %ENV updates (and the Oracle connection fails).

Versions:

  oracle:       11.1.0.6.0
  rt:           3.6.5
  perl:         5.8.8
  mod_perl:     2.03
  HTML-Mason:   1.35
  httpd:        2.2.6
  linux:        2.6.22 (F7)

I've spent several hours on this trying different configurations but I
can't get Oracle to come up with the +Parent option.  Any help is
appreciated.  Thanks.