In preparation to seeking help from the Perl Monks, scholarship on this problem includes, but is not limited to, the following: a careful study of my self-study textbook (MySQL and Perl for the Web by Paul DuBois), and numerous hyperlinks in Google....all without success. I'm learning Perl and in following the textbook that I'm using, I'm trying to employ an easier way to connect to my mySQL server (the SQL database is on my web hosted site) using DBI's "connect_with_option_file" method and .my.cnf option file. In other words, in lieu of using the following instruction (which works perfectly well) in each of my cgi source programs:

    $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:gmacfadd_webdb:localhost","gmacfadd
+_webdev2","webdevpass2",
                    {PrintError => 0, RaiseError => 1});
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I've put the following connection code information in a library function module called WebDB.pm and placed it in the directory home/gmacfadd/public_html/cgi-bin/dubois on my hosted site:

    #! /usr/bin/perl -wT
    package WebDB;

    use strict;
    use DBI;

    my $host_name = "localhost";
    my $db_name = "gmacfadd_webdb";
    my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=$db_name;host=$host_name";
    # Connect to MySQL server using hardwired name and password
    sub connect
    {
        return (DBI->connect ($dsn, "gmacfadd_webdev2", "webdevpass2",
            {PrintError => 0, RaiseError =>1}));
    }

    sub connect_with_option_file
    {
            $dsn .= ";mysql_read_default_file=$ENV{HOME}/.my.cnf";
        return (DBI->connect ($dsn, undef, undef,
            {PrintError => 0, RaiseError =>1}));
    }
    1;    #return true
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In accordance with the above code, the hardwired connection methods using name and password also work fine. It is the with connect_with_otion_file that I'm having difficulty. I have duly created the .my.cnf file in my root directory (C:/.my.cnf) on my Windows XP system, specifiying the following client program connection parameters:

    [client]
    user="gmacfadd_webdev2"
    password="webdevpass2"
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I have created and confirmed that the aforementioned user and password are existing in mySQL. When I then try to run the CGI containing the following:

    #! /usr/bin/perl -wT
    # intro7b.cgi - use WebDB to connect
    use strict;            # FORCE ALL VARIABLES TO BE DECLARED BEFORE
+ USE
    use DBI;            # IMPORT THE DATABASE INTERFACE METHODS
    use CGI qw(:standard);
    use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser);
    use lib qw(/home/gmacfadd/public_html/cgi-bin/dubois);
    use WebDB;

    my ($dbh, $sth, $count, $user);    # DECLARE VARIABLES

    $dbh = WebDB::connect_with_option_file();
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I receive the following error message: DBI connect('database=gmacfadd_webdb;host=localhost; mysql_read_default_file=/.my.cnf','',...) failed: Access denied for user: 'gmacfadd@localhost' (Using password: NO) at /home/gmacfadd/public_html/cgi-bin/dubois/WebDB.pm line 20 Can you please help me correct my problem?