My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am delighted to announce that this problem is now SOLVED. That is, I can
now access my MySQL database from a Perl script running under mod_perl.
I won't detail the whole sorry affair again, but the rogue line read:
$dsn = "DBI:$driver:database=shapeshifter;host=localhost";
I must offer special thanks to Guido Moonen [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] who
suggested "In the error log is a error code 10061 (Which stands for
connection refused) this means that the application cannot even open a
connection to the mysql server. Maybe you should also provide the DSN with
a port number. Or try to use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost." I did try
changing "localhost" to 127.0.0.1 (and also tried the actual IP address of
the computer). This generated a whole new set of error messages that
finally showed me the light.
Two things were wrong:
1) I was using "localhost" when I should have been using an IP address
2) (you're not going to believe this) My firewall was dropping all
requests between mod_perl (running on my machine) and the MySQL server (on
my LAN) - yet it was allowing the same request using CGI rather than
mod_perl, we're still trying to figure out why
I adjusted both and got the output I have spent 36 hours seeking.
I would like to thank every single person who took the time to offer their
invaluable advice and help. I would also like to apologise for the huge
volume of traffic this problem generated within the list. I'm sorry.
Thanks again Guido.
Kindest regards,
Jonathan M. Hollin
Digital-Word.com