Problems with imagick's imagick_readimage

Hi I was wondering if you any advice as to why the imagick function imagick_readimage can not read a url on my php installation. Problem: I am trying to get imagick to load an image from a URL. I can read from a file on the a file system no problem. eg, $url = "http://static.php.net/www.php.net/images/php_snow.gif"; $handle = imagick_readimage($url) ; // THIS DOES NOT WORK $url = "/tmp/foo.gif"; $handle = imagick_readimage($file) ; // THIS DOES WORK also I can get GD to read from a URL .eg. $url = "http://static.php.net/www.php.net/images/php_snow.gif"; $src_img=ImageCreateFromGIF($url); The problem started after I was forced to change servers due to a disk crash. I am using the same versions of the software to build the php/mysql/apache. Is there any configuration /installation setting that I have missed that would stop me from loading the image via the URL ??? I have tried using GD, but found the image scaling quality to be substandard to imagick. I would like to use image magic if possible. Has anyone had similar problems? Here is a summary of my config: Apache 2.0.48 / mysql 3.23.58 PHP 4.3.4:

Configure Command      './configure' '--with-apxs2=/smartbid/webserver/bin/apxs' '--with-mysql=/smartbid/database/' '--prefix=/smartbid/webserver/php' '--with-imagick' '--with-config-file-path=/smartbid/webserver/php/etc' '--with-openssl=/usr/local/ssl' '--with-zlib' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr/local/lib' '--with-exif' '--with-png-dir=/usr/local/lib' '--with-db3=/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.3.3/lib'

Imagemagick: 5.57

Shared libraries  --enable-shared=yes           yes
Static libraries  --enable-static=yes           yes
GNU ld            --with-gnu-ld=yes             yes
LZW support       --enable-lzw=no               no
Quantum depth     --with-quantum-depth=16       16

Delegate Configuration:

BZLIB             --with-bzlib=yes              yes
DPS               --with-dps=yes                no
EXIF              --with-exif=yes               yes
FlashPIX          --with-fpx=yes                no
FreeType 2.0      --with-ttf=yes                yes
Ghostscript       None                          /usr/bin/gs (7.05)
Ghostscript fonts --with-gs-font-dir=default    /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1/
Ghostscript lib   --with-gslib=no               no
JBIG              --with-jbig=yes               no
JPEG v1           --with-jpeg=yes               yes
JPEG-2000         --with-jp2=yes                no
LCMS              --with-lcms=yes               yes
Magick++          --with-magick-plus-plus=yes   yes
PERL              --with-perl=yes               /usr/bin/perl
PNG               --with-png=yes                yes
TIFF              --with-tiff=yes               yes
Windows fonts     --with-windows-font-dir=      none
WMF               --with-wmf=yes                no
X11               --with-x=                     no
XML               --with-xml=yes                no
ZLIB              --with-zlib=yes               yes

imagick php API 0.9.8 Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Regards John Clegg