There is nothign wrong with having the database handle in a global whatsoever. This is my suggestion. In fact in the Mason book they even weigh the alternative, which is even worse. Personally, I maintain many mason sites, and I have at least two globals in every app, one for the dbh - $dbh - and one for the session - $s.

If you follow this design your root /autohandler should have this

<%shared>
        ## Create database handle
        $dbh = DBI->connect(
                q{dbi:Pg:dbname=contacts},
                q{ecarroll},
                "",
                {AutoCommit=>0, RaiseError=>1, PrintError=>1}
        ) || die "Could not Connect to  DB".$dbi::errstr;

        $dbh->commit;
</%shared>

<%cleanup>
        undef $S;
        $dbh->commit;
</%cleanup>
[download]

<%init>
        ## Verfiy we have a cookie with a _session_id
        my $j = Apache2::Cookie::Jar->new($r);
        my $c = $j->cookies('Dealermade');
        unless ( defined $c ) {
                Dealermade::Error::nice_error($m, 'E201');
        }
        ## Verify we have session that matches cookies ID
        my %APACHE_SESSION;
        eval {
                tie %APACHE_SESSION, 'Apache::Session::Postgres', $c->
+value, {
                        Handle                  =>      $dbh,
                        Commit                  =>      1,
                };
        };
        if ( $@ ) {
                ## No tuple with matching ID (form cookie), bogus data
+.
                $dbh->rollback;
                Dealermade::Error::nice_error($m, 'E301');
        }
        $S = \%APACHE_SESSION;

        ## Verify that the sessioned user still has an entry in the us
+ers table
        ## Save user information into $U by ref
        $U = $dbh->selectrow_hashref(
                q{ SELECT * FROM users WHERE pkid = ? }, {}, $APACHE_S
+ESSION{'pkid'}
        );
        if ( defined $U ) {
                delete $U->{'password'};
        }
        else {
                $dbh->rollback;
                Dealermade::Error::nice_error($m, 'E501');
        }
</%init>
[download]

        PerlSetVar MasonAllowGlobals $dbh
        PerlAddVar MasonAllowGlobals $U
        PerlAddVar MasonAllowGlobals $S
        PerlModule Apache::DBI
        PerlRequire /etc/apache2/db.pl
        PerlModule Dealermade::Error
        PerlModule CGI
        PerlModule Dealermade::Event
        PerlModule Apache2::Request
        PerlModule Apache2::Cookie
        PerlModule Data::HTMLDumper
        PerlModule DBIx::Abstract
        PerlModule Apache::Session::Postgres
        PerlModule Digest::SHA1
        PerlModule Template
        PerlModule DBI
        PerlModule DBD::Pg
        <LocationMatch "(\.html|\.mas)$">
                SetHandler perl-script
                PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
        </LocationMatch>
        <Location "/auth_required/edit/">
                SetHandler perl-script
                PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
        </Location>

        <Location "/auth_required/add/">
                SetHandler perl-script
                PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
        </Location>
[download]