Hi Velaki, thanks for that swift reply!

$user and $pass work fine when I run the script from the command line and there is no way they could be changed during the CGI execution (they are, erm, hard coded...).

I went through mysql.user and the $user and $pass combination definitely are allowed on this database, from localhost and 127.0.0.1.

I hope you don't mind me asking if you could give me any pointers what to change in httpd.conf? Do I have to allow more in the ScriptAlias <Directory "/blah/blah"></Directory> directive? Thanks!