Problems with external password store.

I have two database servers, there are some differences 
between the way that perl dbd/dbi is installed on these
machines, but both are running HP-UX and Oracle 10g.

I am trying to use external password store (oracle wallet)
to change scripts with embedded login information to be
more secure.

On server B, I configured oracle wallet to use the
$HOME/.sqlnet.ora file.  It work fine with sqlplus
and with a very simple perl script.

On server A, I configured oracle wallet the same way
and it works fine with sqlplus, but the same
simple perl script gives me "invalid username/password"
errors.

I have some version differences between the two machines.

Server B is using DBI 1.601, DBD 1.16, Perl 5.8.8
Server A is using DBI 1.43, DBD 1.16, Perl 5.8.5

I may be able to get them eventually on exactly parallel versions
but that will take quite a bit of time and effort.

Any hope for forward progress otherwise?

Chris Howard