I tried to hack the code a little bit from the original and added test prints to see exactly what's wrong. With the following code, it prints tests 1-3 but test 4 never gets printed. So that, I assume, is the main issue with whatever is going wrong.

It does appear to be a database issue but I'm not very good with them, so can anyone give me an idea of what could possibly be wrong at this point?

Thanks for your help!

if (param())

    {
               print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
                use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
        $username = (param('form_user'));
        $userpass = (param('form_pass'));
        $userpass = md5_hex($userpass);

        #check the database
print "test<br>";

        my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:$edt_dbase", $mysql_user, $m
+ysql_pass) or print DBI->errstr;
        my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM $users_table WHERE user
+name = '$username' AND user_password = '$userpass'");
        $sth->execute;

print "test2<br>";
        
        if ($sth->rows < 1)
        {
            print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
            print "Login information incorrect.";
            $dbh->disconnect;
            print "<script>window.location = 'login.cgi';</script>\n";
            exit;
        }

        else
        {
            
print "test3<br>";
            while ($data = $sth->fetchrow_hashref)
            {

print "test4<br>";
                $u_id = $$data{"user_id"};

                my $auth_user = new CGI::Cookie(-name        =>       
+ 'user_id',
                                                -value        =>      
+  $u_id);
     
                my $auth_pass = new CGI::Cookie(-name        =>       
+ 'user_pass',
                                                -value        =>      
+  $userpass);
                
                
                #$cookieset = $auth_user . ";" . $auth_pass;
                print "Set-Cookie: $auth_user\n";
                print "Set-Cookie: $auth_pass\n";
                
                print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
                print "Welcome " . $username . ", you have successfull
+y logged in.\n";
                                print "$u_id = UID";
                print "<script>window.location = 'index.cgi';</script>
+\n";
            }
        }
        $dbh->disconnect;

    }
[download]