Apache::DB establishes the needed hooks to debug mod_perl code interactively. In order to use it, - add the following code to httpd.conf, after loading mod_perl.so use Apache::DB (); Apache::DB->init; PerlFixupHandler Apache::DB - start apache for a debugging session using a line like: httpd -X -DPERLDB -u Then any perl request will be intercepted by the debugger. Modules such as HTML::Mason have further hooks to get into the debugger at interesting points. This port also provides some sample configuration code that can start up the debugger or the profiler in a similar way (${PREFIX}/share/Apache/DB/perldb.conf)