pages don't go to the error log -- they're in the access log apparently 10 times from 1 request. any file stuff works -- lets say the script it this:

print "ContentType: text/plain \n\n";
open FILE, '> a.txt';
print FILE 'hello world'; 
close FILE;
print 'hello world';
[download]

a.txt will be written. no text will be served by apache.
everything runs fine command line
everything runs fine as a regular cgi
everything runs (*&#$ as mod_perl