Thanks. I removed that line but it didn't seem to help. Anything else that might cause the problem? My code is basically:

my $p = Net::Ping->new();
foreach my $host (@host_array) {
print "$host is ";
print "NOT " unless $p->ping($host, 2);
print "reachable.\n";
}
$p->close();

and if fails on the print "NOT " line. Is there some way to have Ping.pm report where it is dying?