Laruence, while that may be a helpful answer to a few people in the know, just replying back with a single line like that isn't really going to help the people who are having this problem. At least explain why you suggested that, or what it does for those on the list that don't know, especially as it's not a PHP thing, it's a Unix command thing.
Richard, some more info on the command Laruence mentioned can be found at http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/upt/ch12_07.htm which explains it in more detail.
not sure this is relevant as my script is not trying to write to the terminal the >test.log 2>&1 is sending stdout and stderr to the log file not the tty...