A few things. This has notning to do with CGI.pm, rather, how your server has been set up.

1) Have you looked in the Apache error log (normally in /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log). Tail it - you will see the real errors.

2) Have you allowed *.pl to be run as cgi programs? Look in httpd.conf in /usr/local/apache/conf. It may not recognise things ending in .pl as a script.

We have the convention that scripts that are *.pl are run under mod_perl.

Ken