If a simple (working) demo would be useful, some time back I wrote a tutorial showing how to create a basic login page:

A Beginners Guide to CGI::Application

If you want file-based sessions, change this part of Login.pm:

CGI_SESSION_OPTIONS => [
"driver:mysql;serializer:Storable;id:md5",
$self->query, {Handle => $self->dbh},
],
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To this:

CGI_SESSION_OPTIONS => [
"driver:File",
$self->query, {Directory => "/tmp/sessions"},
],
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Then, assuming your web server runs as 'nobody', do this:

mkdir /tmp/sessions
chown nobody:nobody /tmp/sessions
cmod 755 /tmp/sessions
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One final gotcha - make sure you've got all the same versions of all your modules being used on both servers. I try to install on my modules locally, then I can just tar up the modules directory and copy it to a new server, and be sure that I'm running the exact same (noncore) stuff everywhere.

I guess I should have posted my code from the start. Please forgive me of my transgression.

sub cgiapp_init {
        my $self = shift;

        $self->error_mode('error_runmode');
        $CGI::Session::IP_MATCH = 1;
        $self->session_config(
                CGI_SESSION_OPTIONS     => [ "driver:File", $self->que
+ry, { Directory => $CONFIG{sessiondir} } ],
                COOKIE_PARAMS           => {
                        -name           => 'FNBINTRANET',
                        -path           => '/',
                        -secure         => 1,
                        -httponly       => 1,
                },
                SEND_COOKIE             => 1,
        );
}
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I've checked all the relevant modules and the only difference was that the working original server was using older modules and the new server was using the latest & greatest on everything. I've updated the original server modules and nothing broke, but the new server is still not working...

The original server IS using db for the sessions. I copied the exact same code over, installed the necessary modules, setup my session dir, and modified the code above to use files instead of db...was there a step I forgot?

GOT IT!

I commented out the COOKIE_PARAMS & SEND_COOKIE lines and now it works! I have no idea why, but at this point, I don't care cause it works...

Thanks guys for the help!