PERL interface trouble

[Joseph Bussell]

Greetings Listers,
   It has been a while since I deployed a new Mapserver application.  I 
have been leaning on old source on an old box to get the work done.  I 
have been given a new server to set up for our Air Force project and 
have had some issues with getting my code to work.  First of all I am 
using Mapscript ala PERL.  I recognize that the PERL interface has not 
been updated due to a lack of user interest, but I am still partial to 
using it if it can still be done (mostly since I will not have to 
rewrite my routing path functionality).

   My problem is getting the actual mapObj to construct from my 
mapfile.  I have not been able to get any debug information our by 
checking /tmp/mserrors, which used to work nicely in such cases.  All I 
get is an undefined reference.  My code for construction is simple:

my $map = new mapscript::mapObj( $mapfile ) or  carp "Could not create 
mapscript object from mapfile: $mapfile";

in my httpd.conf I define
MS_ERRORFILE              /tmp/mserrors.txt

My mapfile exists and is very simple.
I am running:
 CentOS release 4.3
AMD64, dual core machine
Apache/2.0.52
mapserver-4.8.3.tar.gz
perl, v5.8.5 built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi

Thank you for your time.

Joe Bussell
On Time Systems