Vexing DBD::Pg problem

I've spent several hours today reading lots of docs, learning sneaky ways
to grant access on a whole database's worth of tables at once, and so on,
but have made next to know headway against this exact same error's coming
up everytime I try to run a certain module:

from apache logs:

[Wed Oct 25 14:47:08 2000] [error] DBD::Pg::st execute failed: pqReadData() -- backend closed the channel unexpectedly.
        This probably means the backend terminated abnormally
        before or while processing the request.

I am running:

postgres 7.0.2 (compiled from source)
    running with -i -d2 > postgres.log 2>&1
Linux kernel 2.2.17 on a Debian system

The postgres log shows absolutely nothing; my reading on the web on similar
errors to this seems to show it as being an authorization failure of a kind.
However, auth failues get logged faithfully using a normal client connection.

I assume this has somehow to do with mod_perl.  I can use the module I wrote
(Apache::AuthCookieHandler.pm, part of the Apache::AuthCookie system) from
the command line after modifying it so it doesn't need the Apache->request
object.  Ordinary CGI programs can access the db in question, with the same
authentication information, without apparent difficulty.

I'm quite exhausted & would welcome with great relief any new avenues to check
out with this.  I'm on the list, so no need to Cc: me.  Thanks kindly to all.

--JB

--
------------------------------------------------------------------
                J B Bell            |              /~\
          Systems Administrator     |       ASCII  \ /  Against
            Internet Gateway        |      Ribbon   X   HTML
                                    |    Campaign  / \  Mail