My guess is that the path to file is wrong.

You can check this using the Cwd module.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use CGI;
my $q = new CGI;

use Cwd;
$dir = cwd;

print $q->header('text/plain'),
      $dir;
exit(0);
[download]

My bet is that the current working directory isn't what you think it is when run as a CGI script.

Alternatively, use an absolute path rather than a relative one, ie:

open OUT, ">/path/to/bg.cnt" or die "can't open bg.cnt for writing";
[download]

.02

cLive ;-)

ps - and including $! in the die statment will help - if you put:

use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser'
[download]

at the beginning of your script.