Try putting an initial slash in that path string, to make it absolute: 
$dsn .= ";mysql_read_default_file=/home/gmacfadd/public_html/cgi-bin/d
+ubois/.my.cnf";

[download]
(update: and if that doesn't work, be sure to check permissions along every step of that path; it needs to be readable by both the web server and the mysql daemon (which typically runs with username "mysql"), so rwxr-xr-x on each directory in the path, and rw-r--r-- on the config file itself.)

In reply to Re^3: connect_with_option_file by graff
in thread connect_with_option_file by gmacfadden

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