Dreamhost virtual servers are a bit funky, but Linux obeys my commands -- perl doesn't >< . I got LJHOME set properly (moved it out of the area in the httpd.conf), and dumped the PerlRequire into the .htaccess because it worked there and don't change what works. So now I have the taunting error, where it looks like the modperl_subs.pl code is trying to modify or create another httpd.conf?