I am having a frustrating issue with the perl installation on my server, if I don't use #!/usr/bin/perl -- (forcing it) I get an internal 500 error. I called the provider of my dedicated box and they said the perl mod needed to be installed and then they installed it. It's still not working without the -- hence none of my perl scripts are working right. They escalated my ticket so hopefully they will be able to get it resolved, in the mean time I am trying to research it but putting -- in a search engine get's me nowhere, anyone have any ideas?

you have to use a -- after the shebang? Never seen that before.

Did you accidently upload your files in binary and not ascii? the -- might be offsetting the carriage return.

I double checked that and made sure, apparently the -- forces the path from what they told me at my host. One of the people working on it said "Initially this was an suexec error... it being enabled gives "premature end of script headers" on cpanel machines, but with it disabled I get this: Thu Apr 29 19:47:45 2004] [error] [client 12.96.160.84] file permissions deny server execution: /home/vhfansco/public_html/cgi-bin/wtest.cgi
[Thu Apr 29 19:47:45 2004] [error] [client 12.96.160.84] File does not exist: /home/vhfansco/public_html/403.shtml"

Then he changed permissions or recompiled something and now my entire site is down with 500 Internal Server errors, even threads and I don't know if he left for the day or what Time to give them a call I think.

Might sound obvious, but did you make sure the script permissions are set to 755?

Yes, I double checked it all. They got the site back up and running but the only way any cgi or perl scrips will run is if I have the path set to this #!/usr/bin/perl --
it does work though, go figure

That's an ok path, what's the problem, did it used to be a different path? Sounds like when it was loaded it may have been loaded to a different location if so

I learned that my problem was SmartFTP, I have used this program forever and I set my file types manually to ensure ascii for the right files. It turns out that after it expires (even though you can still use it) it uploads all ascii files in binary, like Navaho suggested. I even watched the upload and it said it was uploading in ascii. Pretty messed up thing to do, why not just disable it when it expires? I am using wsftp now and now having any problems.

try wsftp Light or LE I think works properly in Ascii