I think END has to not call die, and if it does, you get END failed. Actually, the real question is, what does it say under perldiag for this error message? {grin} My copy says:

       END failed--cleanup aborted
           (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing
           an END subroutine.  The interpreter is immediately
           exited.
[download]

Just like I thought. Don't die in your END blocks!

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker