"fairly basic" answers

[sheep]

1) $ggg is not the same (in some cases it is created randomly) for all invocation in the original code, however for debugging I changed it to a static name, and the error stays the same.
2) Yes, sysopen() fails consistently.
3) I tried it 100++ times.
4) Yes, the only thing I changed was to comment out open() call and uncomment sysopen(). UID stays the same. Also, I made sure the directory had the right permissions.

Thanks for the help.
-sheep

[Aristotle]

So nothing else interferes. In that case, there's not much else left to say but "it's (probably) a bug". :/ Now the question is is it a bug in Perl proper, per se - in which case you should take a look at perldoc perlbug -, or is it an issue with the Perl binary package in Slackware, in which case you'd have to report to Patrick or something. (There doesn't seem to be any anoynmous address @slackware.com for bug reports or such, oddly enough.)