We really don't have enough info to go on. For future reference, it's best to include some relevant lines of code. A couple of tips:

• use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/; More likely than not, you'll be able to read off the error if there is one.
• MySQL is interested in the login and password passed to it and little else. Thus, using user 'apache' to login shouldn't be a problem unless that user is restricted access to some libs (unlikely).
• Consider that you might be banging your head against the wall but dealing with the wrong issues. Could the error have something else to do with the script.
• Check the MySQL as well as the Apache error_logs for messages that might help.

Perhaps next time you could be a little more descriptive than "evaluates to true" but, if you try out some of my tips above, it's unlikely that you won't find out what's going on.

AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy nor Macperl is responsible for the comments made by AgentM. Remember, you can build any logical system with NOR.