cgi and perl script problems

When trying to run a perl or cgi script, i get a 500 Internal Server Error. This is server wide, and doesn't just happen in one directory. I checked the log file as the error suggested, and i see

/usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libiconv.so.1" not found

libiconv.so.1 is in my /usr/local/lib directory, so i imagine some link went weird. I really can't think of anything that would do this. The machine was running just fine a few days ago
thanks for the help
-Dave

Apache 500 error probably has nothing to do with iconv. Make sure the directory paths to your script is searchable by the user Apache runs as (Read + Execute = Searchable). Then your script itself needs to be executable.
500 error can be all sort of misconfiguration. You should start out with a hello world script to ensure it wasn't your poor coding problem. Keep in mind, you can't run CGI scripts other than cgi-bin directory (ScriptAlias) by default. You need to enable Options ExecCGI on top of setting appropriate permission.

>> libiconv.so.1 is in my /usr/local/lib directory

Then run ldconfig -m /usr/local/lib or reinstall iconv or even version 2.0 of it.

Its not a misconfiguration. Everything had been working fine for about three months now. All the cgi scripts have run before on the same system with the same configuration, up until last night. I install the iconv library again to no avail. I even redid apache and reinstalled perl. ldconfig -m /usr/local/lib didn't fix it. I'm very much stumped right now. any other help or comments would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
-Dave

I just noticed something. THe error has changed, now it says
/usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libiconv.so.2" not found
so it found the new shared object, but is unable to use it?
I'm confused =)
-Dave

Everything has been working fine in the past doesn't necessarily mean it will work forever. Sometime things just break unexpectedly, could be hardware failure or could be all sort of things or even you have been hacked.

iconv is a library used by other applications for converting charsets. If you insist it was the cause of your 500 CGI problems, start here -> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_mime.html and see what it's all about.

BTW, why you needed iconv anyway? Why can't you just uninstall it or reinstall it and read the README file carefully? What OS are you running? Why can't you install it from RPM or follow its install path accordingly? Are you sure /usr/local was the appropriate PREFIX for it to install to?

Thats the thing, i did reinstall the iconv library, and it did nothing. I'll try recompiling apache again with mod_mime.
Thanks
still confused and frustrated :-)
-Dave