SetEnv should work fine as long as your server has mod_env enabled. If not, there are other ways to set environment variables in Apache.

In the unlikely case that $HOME actually exists, it will most likely be useless since it would probably refer to ~apache and not ~you. I suppose that mod_suexec might be able to make it your $HOME again, but that's a lot of work for little gain.

You might have a problem with permissions. For Apache to be able to read your files, you have to grant permissions for others to read. Maybe it's as simple as chmod o+x perl5lib. You can check if Apache can read the dir with a simple cgi that includes something like 

#!/usr/bin/perl -T
print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
print "PERL5LIB is $ENV{PERL5LIB}\n"
-X $ENV{PERL5LIB} and print "Apache can read $ENV{PERL5LIB}\n";

[download]

If all else fails, use lib should do the trick, so I'd bet on a permissions problem.

Update: made script useable.

In reply to Re: apache2 passing PERL5LIB environment to cgi by rowdog
in thread apache2 passing PERL5LIB environment to cgi by debinix

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