Bruce & Jean-Luc, I'm wondering how you guys are trying to use DBD::MySQL - I was working on the commandline, so adding to my .bashrc was enough because that put it into the environment of my terminal. If you're not using bash, or if you are trying to use DBD::MySQL from a web server or something, then the edit will not be in the process's environment, so it will be as if you didn't do anything. The bottom line is that you need the environment variable to set for the process that is trying to use DBD::MySQL.