Can you elaborate? I read this and hear "it works at one time and not at another", but the error messages suggest that something wasn't set up right.

So, is it that the files are there at time A, and not there at time B? That's what it sounds like, and that would be VERY confusing.

First stab: recall that when run as CGI scripts, these scripts have different environment varialbes available to them than when they're run from the command line. In particular, they *DO NOT* have $ENV{ORACLE_HOME} set. Set it explicitly in the script before you connect. Then try again.

I'm assuming you installed the Oracle client libraries and symlinked libclntsh.so in a system lib directory (check /etc/ld.so.conf for a list of those; then do ln -s /usr/lib/libclnstsh.so.8.0 $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libclntsh.so.8.0</code> )).

HTH