I don't immedetly see your problem on a first readthrough, while tried. I agree with fglock about printing your HTTP header as early as possible. Since the header information actualy changes for you depending on processing, that's fairly late, so just stick a Content-Type: text/plain in temporarly so you can see what's going on.

I suspect, however, that what's going on is that an open is failing, somthing you don't test for nearly enough. Whenever you say "open", an "or die "...: $!" should fly off of your fingers like second nature. I made that mistake with my first post here, and got back a million and a half replies yelling at me for it -- and it was good advice, but most people seemed to ignore the actual problem I was having. (Yes, that was mostly completly irrelevant. I'm in a retrospective mood.)

Oh, and another note -- you should never store passwords in plaintext like that. Not only is it a security risk, but at some point you'll end up with passwords in your head that have no busniess being there, and will just tempt you -- or at least clutter up memory space you could be using for more useful things.