I must apologize profusely for my premature post. After having looked all around on perlmonks and google, I have finally found my answer.

I did not realize that the fork-ed process picked up from the point at which fork was called. I was led to believe (by another programmer) that it started the fork-ed process at the beginning.

I would still appreciate comments and any input on the setuid problem I mentioned.

Thanks, Chad.