For the pedantic, a more technically correct title for this node might be "Using ModPerl::Registry when you don't have an account that has or are not in a group that has write access to httpd.conf, and can't convince the sysadmin to edit it, and can't change hosts, and..." but I think "Using ModPerl::Registry without root", while less accurate, is a snappier title.

This has been tested with mod_perl 1.99_09. YMMV.

First, check the httpd.conf setup. The file is often in a directory like /usr/local/apache/conf. It should contain something like this:

LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so
# ...
<IfModule mod_perl.c>
  <Location /perl>
    #AllowOverride None
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlHandler ModPerl::Registry
    Options ExecCGI
    allow from all
    PerlSendHeader On
  </Location>
  # the next part is not required for this recipe to work
  <Location /cgi-perl>
    #AllowOverride None
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlHandler ModPerl::PerlRun
    Options ExecCGI
    allow from all
    PerlOptions +ParseHeaders
  </Location>
</IfModule>
[download]

Then you need three more files:

1. ~/public_html/.htaccess, containing these lines:

<FilesMatch "modperl-test.pl">
    SetHandler  perl-script
    PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
    Options +ExecCGI
    PerlSendHeader on
</FilesMatch>
[download]

2. ~/public_html/TestModPerl.pm, containing this:

(The following example is adapted from the example in Stas Bekman's tutorial "Getting Started With mod_perl".)

package TestModPerl;

my $total = 0;
my $counter = 0;

sub run {
    $counter = 0;
    for (1 .. 5) {
    increment_counter();
    }
}

sub increment_counter {
    $counter++;
    print "Counter is equal to $counter!<br>\n";
}

sub total {
    $total++;
    print "This has run $total times.<br>\n";
}

1;
__END__
# apparently in mod_perl2 having __END__ is OK.
[download]

3. ~/public_html/modperl-test.pl, containing this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

BEGIN { push @INC, "/home/YOURACCOUNTNAMEHERE/public_html"; }

use strict;
use TestModPerl;

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
TestModPerl::run();
TestModPerl::total();
[download]

Now access the URL for your script to see the result:

http://www.yourdomain.org/modperl-test.pl

If things are working as intended, you will see the count go from one to five with each invocation (as you hit refresh) and you will see the total climb incrementally across invocations. So after three invocations it will look like this:

Counter is equal to 1!
Counter is equal to 2!
Counter is equal to 3!
Counter is equal to 4!
Counter is equal to 5!
This has run 3 times.