I am using Suse Linux 10.0 and installed the default setup of Apache(2.0.54):
-/srv/www/cgi-bin
- ScriptAlias=/cgi-bin/ "/srv/www/cgi-bin/"

I placed the following minimal script in the /srv/www/cgi-bin directory:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello world.";

I did the chmod a+x on the script file which now has the following properties:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 74 2006-05-18 16:36 first.pl

From the command line, I call /srv/www/cgi-bin/first.pl and I get:
Content-type: text/html

Hello world.
So there does not seem to be anything wrong with the script.
Yet, the browser gives me:

"Server error!
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.
Error message:

Premature end of script headers: first.pl
If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 500"

The system log gives me:
"May 19 08:54:33 HPa730n kernel: SubDomain: REJECTING x access to /srv/www/cgi-bin/cgi (httpd2-prefork(9971) profile /usr/sbin/httpd2-prefork active /usr/sbin/httpd2-prefork)"

Can anybody tell me what I'm missing?
Thank you.

Have you checked everything from:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/cgi.html
especially from the troubleshooting section?

Have you also tried chown'ing them? Apache may not want to execute
programs with rwxrwxrwx permissions, owned by root user and group.

Thank you for the suggestions.
Yes,I have checked everything in the link.
I have also chown'd the file to user -denis (that's me) and to group -users.
Same problem. UIt is an access problem all right as withnessed by the Apache2 error log file.
"[Fri May 19 12:06:00 2006] [error] [client 192.168.0.9] (13)Permission denied: exec of '/srv/www/cgi-bin/first2.pl' failed
[Fri May 19 12:06:00 2006] [error] [client 192.168.0.9] Premature end of script headers: first2.pl"

Can you list the directory permissions of all following directories:
/srv
/srv/www
/srv/www/cgi-bin/

Maybe executing fails because the user Apache is running under doesn't have permission to reach the file.

Here is the result of ls -l on the /srv/www/cgi-bin directory:

HPa730n:/srv/www/cgi-bin # ls -l
total 228
drwxrwxrwx 2 denis users 432 2006-05-19 12:43 .
drwxrwxrwx 7 denis users 168 2006-05-09 08:21 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 1147 2006-05-19 12:43 cgi
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 1149 2006-05-19 12:43 cgi~
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 1147 2006-05-10 10:59 cgi1
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 104 2006-05-10 08:35 check
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 104 2006-05-10 08:35 check~
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 75 2006-05-19 09:57 first1.pl
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 75 2006-05-19 12:03 first2.pl
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 74 2006-05-18 16:36 first.pl
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 110 2006-05-10 16:27 first.pl~
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 111884 2005-09-09 15:05 htsearch
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 24679 2005-09-09 14:59 info2html
-rw-rw-rw- 1 denis users 1780 2005-09-09 14:59 info2html.conf
-rwxrwxrwx 1 denis users 43764 2005-09-09 15:05 qtest
-rw-rw-rw- 1 denis users 1326 2006-05-10 10:29 test.html

No no, what the other bloke ment was give the output of
ls -la /srv
ls -la /srv/www and
ls -la /srv/www/cgi-bin
Well the last one is shown in your reply but these other two should have permissions to execute by "anyone"...

I had checked that too.
But just to show you I'm not lying, here it is:
HPa730n:/srv # ls -l
total 1
drwxrwxrwx 4 denis users 96 2005-09-09 12:27 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 544 2006-05-18 13:01 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2005-09-09 12:27 ftp
drwxrwxrwx 7 denis users 168 2006-05-09 08:21 www
HPa730n:/srv # cd www
HPa730n:/srv/www # ls -l
total 1
drwxrwxrwx 7 denis users 168 2006-05-09 08:21 .
drwxrwxrwx 4 denis users 96 2005-09-09 12:27 ..
drwxrwxrwx 2 denis users 432 2006-05-19 12:43 cgi-bin
drwxrwxrwx 4 denis users 128 2005-11-10 08:37 htdig
drwxrwxrwx 3 denis users 1408 2006-05-10 08:58 htdocs
drwxrwxrwx 2 denis users 144 2005-11-10 08:42 icons
drwxrwxrwx 2 denis users 48 2005-09-09 14:55 perl-lib

Ok. How is your Directory directive for alias cgi-bin?
Is it something like this?
And have you restarted your server lately?

<Directory "/srv/www/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -Includes
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Ok, now I think I know what is the issue here. You should not use Options +ExecCGI unless you have cgi-bin -directory outside the cgi-bin ScriptAlias. So if you have
in your MainServer directive, you could try using in your cgi-bin Directory directive.
To put it alltogether chance your config to
save your configuration, restart server and laugh to me, if it doesn't work.