For Unix, it's much easier to set access permissions yourself. Here's what you should do:
You should always set all files under subdirectories of your cgi-bin as mode 0700 or 0760 if possible. This is of prime importance for the security of your configuration file!!! Only by setting the files with this mode are you sure that www users will not be able to accidentally peek into your configuration file. Consider yourself warned. You should also disable read access by www users by setting mode 0711 on all files under cgi-bin directory. Do note that cgi scripts are usually launched with web server's user ID and group ID, so the access permission settings should consider this (at least you should allow POD to read/write to your cgi-bin and its subdirectories!). If these settings are not set correctly, you might see POD complain about can't find initiation file or DB file is locked. That's because POD do not have the authorization to read those files when permission setting is not right.
To test whether the access permissions are
correctly set on your cgi-bin directory and its subdirectories:
You can test if "read"
access is disallowed by trying to access the DB file through its URL. If
the URL of your web server's cgi-bin directory is http://myserver.com/cgi-bin, and you DB
is under fldb subdirectory, then your DB initiation (configuration) file URL is
http://myserver.com/cgi-bin/fldb/fldb.ini.
Just type this URL into your web browser and see what happens. If you get "read access forbidden", then your files are safe from peeping eyes. If,
instead, your web browser starts to download the file or even displays its content,
you know your DB is in danger. Please follow the instruction above to disable
the read access!!