As mentioned by ptum the problem is likely due to file perm. I did this on my machine (Apache 2.0/Mod_perl) -

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT

use strict;
use CGI;
use CGI::Carp   qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

open (OUT, ">/no/perm/path/junkfile") or die $!;

print OUT ("hi there\n");

close(OUT);
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I get this -

Software error:

Permission denied at /var/www/html/perl/create.cgi line 7.

For help, please send mail to the webmaster (root@localhost), giving t
+his error message and the time and date of the error.
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However when i changed the path to /tmp/junkfile (world-writeable for me) it works just fine. I guess if you turn on the fatalsToBrowser (turn it off for production) you will get more info. Also take a look at your apache logs!

cheers

SK