PHP 4.0 Bug #8652: exec and system always return -1

From: simon.king@pipinghotnetworks.com Operating system: RedHat Linux 6.2 PHP version: 4.0.4 PHP Bug Type: Program Execution Bug description: exec and system always return -1 <? function run_command($command, $errmsg) { $lastline = exec("$command 2>&1", &$lines, $rc); if ($rc) { print("<pre>\n"); print("$errmsg\n\n"); print("Command : $command\nReturned : $rc\nOutput\n------\n"); print(join("\n", $lines)."\n\n"); } return($rc); } $rc = run_command("/bin/uname -a", "Uname Failed!"); print("rc now = $rc"); ?> All the commands that I have tested (uname is just an example) have returned -1 as the return code, even though the command has executed perfectly well. I get the same error if I use system instead of exec. I cannot see how else to run a command and check to see whether it failed or not. I am using PHP RPMS downloaded from http://rpms.arvin.dk/php/ but this does not seem like a packaging error, so I am reporting it here. -- Edit Bug report at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=8652&edit=1