When I hit enter on "n" the machine goes into deep kernel space CPU usage and
never comes back.

Single stepping through the code takes me to line 666 of
/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.6/i386-linux-thread-multi/DBI.pm.

(near the very end of sub connect())

    665 
    666     my $dbh = &$connect_closure(undef, undef);
    667 
    668     $dbh->{dbi_connect_closure} = $connect_closure if $dbh;
    669 
    670     return $dbh;
    671 }
    672 
    673 
    674 sub disconnect_all {

single stepping (once) into the closure, and then next'ing gets me to a line
598, where I inspect $dsn, $user, $pass, $attr:

  DB<3> x $dsn, $user, $pass, $attr
0  'database=foo;host=www.foo.com'
1  'fooadmin'
2  'foo'
3  HASH(0x990f47c)
   'AutoCommit' => 1
   'PrintError' => 1
   'Username' => 'fooadmin'

This should connect, but at line 605, $errstr:

Unknown MySQL server host \'host=www.foo.com\' (1)'

If I change dsn to 'host=www.foo.com;database=foo' it will complain 

0  'Unknown database \'database=foo\''

I have 10 other apps that are using the same config file and the same layer
that calls the same DBI->connect, but they all work.

Any ideas?

My Code:

  DB<5> DBI->connect( "DBI:mysql:database=foo;host=www.foo.com", "fooadmin", "foo")

  DB<6> l
316==>          $self->{'_handle'} = DBI->connect( "DBI:mysql:database=$self->{'_db_name'};host=$self->{'_db_host'}", "$self->{'_db_user'}", "$self->{'_db_pass'}");
317 
318     }
319 
320     #=====================================================================
321     # package entry
322     #=====================================================================
323 
324     {
325:            $gNumber::DB::singleton = undef;
  DB<6> x "DBI:mysql:database=$self->{'_db_name'};host=$self->{'_db_host'}", "$self->{'_db_user'}", "$self->{'_db_pass'}"
0  'DBI:mysql:database=foo;host=www.foo.com'
1  'fooadmin'
2  'foo'
  DB<7> n