Curious.  I had no problems with perl5.001 on current/{i386,sparc},
   even with dynamic loading enabled.  I've made some changes to the
   source, but even the initial test I did before I made my mods, with
   just the default netbsd setup for perl, passed all the tests handily.
   
   Are your libraries/gas/ld/gcc up to date?

it -might- be a problem with the latest ld.so.  i'm not sure how
upto date mine is, but it worked with all the alpha/beta's i ran
and 5.000 (i think).
   
   Maybe some kernel option is at fault.  I use the options SETUIDSCRIPTS
   and INSECURE, as well as various COMPAT options.
   
   If you don't have SETUIDSCRIPTS set, then I think that perl is compiled
   differently, so this is a real possibility.

i don't believe any of these are at fault here.  i'm going to rebuild
ld and see what difference that makes.

well, a new ld.so fixed it:

All tests successful.
u=2.41667  s=4.86667  cu=61.5167  cs=45  files=90  tests=2063

so, my verdict is to reinstall src/gnu/usr.bin/rtld and see
how it goes then.

.mrg.