...but it IS of consequence if you thrash $meta_configs{login_cookie_expiration} because you use it two lines after get_timestamp is called.

If you replaced everything within get_timestamp in that way, it should work. The problem is that if you set -expires to 1 (after being chopped from 1h) then the cookie expires immediately. If you would like to see what exactly is going on try connecting to your webserver on port 80 and type in a valid request for the script and see what the head says. If the cookie that the page returns says that it expires Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT, then you are using an invalid expiration representation in $meta_configs{login_cookie_expiration} (which is the variable you use for expires). Try printing $meta_configs{login_cookie_expiration} to the page's output. If it doesn't end with s,m,h,d,M, or y, isn't "now", and isn't a fully qualified date, then CGI happily sets the expires to Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT.

If you could post the new version of get_timestamp as well as what $meta_configs{login_cookie_expiration} contains, we'd be more than happy to help.

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1