can someone tell me why I am unable to set the $name = to the appropriate value. If I set $user = to a valid user everything works fine but as soon as I set it to remote_user $name is never populated. It has worked in the past and I never changed the line other then to comment it out. 
#Volunteer.pl - Insert Volunteers into database

use strict;
use DBI;
use CGI qw(:standard);

my $query = CGI::new();
my ($dbh, $sth, $sql);
my @volunteer_date  = $query->param("Volunteer");
my $parent = $query->param("Parent");
my $user = $query->remote_user();
#my $user = "<valid user>";
#my $name = undef;
my $name = ();
my $date = ();
my $sub_parent = ();
#my $parent = "Father";
#my @volunteer_date = ("2002-01-18");

print $query->header(),
      $query->start_html (-title=>'Volunteer List Form',
                          -link=>'#FFFFFF',
                          -vlink=>'99FF99',
                          -alink=>'black',
                          -style=>{'-src'=>'/CSS/stylesheet.css'}



# store subparent for each parent
my %parent_hash = ( 'Father' => 'Mother',
                    'Mother' => 'Father' );

if ( @volunteer_date ){
if (exists $parent_hash{$parent}) {
  my $sub_parent = $parent_hash{$parent};

  for my $col ( $parent, $sub_parent ) {
    my $sql = "select $col from Roster where User=?";
    my $sth = $dbh->selectcol_arrayref( $sql, undef, $user );
    if ( @$sth && $sth->[0] ) {  # any rows returned?
      $name = $sth->[0];  # take first one
      last;
    }
  }
}

print $query->h1({-align=>'center'},"THANK YOU FOR SIGNING UP $name");

   foreach $date ( @volunteer_date ) {

        $sql = "select distinct Volunteer from Volunteer where Volunte
+er =? and Date =?";
        my $sth = $dbh->selectcol_arrayref( $sql, undef, $name, $date 
+);

#Verify the parent is not signed up.
           if( @$sth ) {

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In reply to remote_user not identifing user by mnlight

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