AHA! The httpd/error_log reports the following:
Sun Apr 15 01:12:49 2001 kk.pl: DBI->connect(Loader) failed: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (111) at /usr/www/loader/cgi-bin/kk.pl line 26

So the problem is a sockets problem
(Question: why would a command prompt execution use a different socket from the apache execution??)

Using find / -name mysql.sock yields it in /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock. Since this is not where the error is I looked to see how mysql is configured by typing mysqladmin version. This is the result: 

mysqladmin  Ver 8.18 Distrib 3.23.35, for pc-linux-gnu on i686
Copyright (C) 2000 MySQL AB & MySQL Finland AB & TCX DataKonsult AB
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software
+,
and you are welcome to modify and redistribute it under the GPL licens
+e

Server version          3.23.35
Protocol version        10
Connection              Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket             /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:                 29 min 46 sec

Threads: 1  Questions: 1  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 6  Flush tables: 1  
+Open tables: 0 Queries per second avg: 0.001

[download]

Clearly the server is configured correctly, so the problem must be one step pack, in the DBI or the DBD::mysql

I'm still hunting for where the /tmp/mysql.sock is specified, but I thought I'd give you this update.

In reply to Re: Perl Script connecting to Mysql works from command prompt, not from Apache by gary kuipers
in thread Perl Script connecting to Mysql works from command prompt, not from Apache by gary kuipers

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