my $dbh = DBI->connect( $DSN, $username, $mysqlpassword ) or die "$DBI::errstr";

In addition to kcott's advice about string interpolation and DSN construction, I would also not necessarily trust fatalsToBrowser to present the die message to you. While debugging, just print it instead. That way you'll know better what's going on. I assume throughout this that you have no access to the web server error log.

my $dbh = DBI->connect( $DSN, $username, $mysqlpassword );
if ($dbh) {
    say "Connected to the MySQL database.";
} else {
    say "Catastrophe! Connection failure with DSN '$DSN': $DBI::errstr
+";
}

[download]

Try that. You could also decide to print $username and $mysqlpassword on failure. See the Basic Debugging Checklist for more valuable hints.

🦛

In reply to Re: 500 internal server error when connecting to mysql database by hippo
in thread 500 internal server error when connecting to mysql database by mcfarnell

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