Enforcing perl warnings and taint mode

I was getting an unexplained, unlogged 500 internal server error response for a perl Hello World script.

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n<p>Hello World</p>\n";

This was especially odd because I have a perl program running elsewhere on the same server. After comparing .htaccess settings and triple-checking my Content-type syntax, I found the apparent cause: the server requires either the -w (warnings) or the -T (taint checks) flag be turned on.

I was unable to determine which setting causes this. mod_perl's PerlSwitches can force all scripts to be run with -wT turned on, but I could find no setting to refuse to run scripts which lack either flag.

For a description of taint mode, read perlsec.

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