Thanks for your reply. I was thinking myself about this kind of detour but found it a bit.. pathetic? Last week I was struggling with similar issue, namely LWP::UserAgent within CGI. No matter what, it is not possible to use them both when the server requires authentication over ssh. The only solutions found on internet suggest giving up on host authentication, or forcing ssh version, or using older ssl engine - all for nothing. I gave up in that case and started node.js. In this case it might be hard, since I have to use DBB::ODBC in the same script.. *Sigh*