I can not give you an answer, unfortunately, but I can provide a few more data points. I'm experienced the same problem running under Linux with perl 5.8.2. However, when I run the exact same code under Windows using perl 5.8 I don't have the problem!

For example, under Linux and using Mozilla, when I reload a page served by my HTTP::Daemon derived class too quickly the process dies without any error messages. Under Windows, quickly reloading does not cause any problems. I have no idea why this would be the case, but maybe my experience will help someone diagnose the problem.