I'm writing a similar program and I have this code:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;

my $q = CGI::new();
$q->use_named_parameters();

open (PASSWD, ".PASSWORD") or die "Couldn't open file";
my $matched= 0;
my $queried_user = $q->param(-name=>"user");
my $queried_pass = $q->param(-name=>"pass");

while (<PASSWD>) {
    my ($user,$pass) = split(/\s/,$_);
    if (($queried_user eq $user) and ($queried_pass eq $pass)) {
    $matched = 1;
        $q->redirect("works.html");
    }
}
if (!$matched) {
    print $q->header() . $q->start_html;
    print "Bad Username/Password combination<br>";
    print $q->end_html;
}
[download]

but every time I try to run it I get an internal server error it's not
my system so I can't easily check the server logs for the specific error
Any ideas?

both .PASSWORD and works.html are in the same directory as the script

one more question, when I run this program in interactive
mode from the command line am I supposed to be seeing the
redirected website print out or what? right now I get nothing

Thanks for the help

-Etan