posix_getpwnam() and empty names in server-side included php files?

This has been an annoying problem: I have a 'phonebook' search page that searches for users in our ldap database. Part of the information the ldap database holds is the user's username. I take the username and pass it to posix_getpwnam() to get that user's 'dir' entry. I can then check to see if the user has a public web page and link to it. One of our users, when matched in the search, causes the php script to fail--or more spefically, the entire connection is terminated, and 'the document contained no data'. Viewing the transcript of all data transferred shows that no data at all is returned: no headers or document. This is the line where the 'crash' occurs: $userInfo = posix_getpwnam($user); Note that all other users that I've tested work fine when the search returns them; but if someone does a search that returns the one 'bad' user, the connection gets terminated with absolutely no data returned. This only happens if the PHP script is called as a server-side include! <!--#include virtual="bad.php3" --> You can see a test page at: http://www.acusd.edu/ac/etc/people.shtml?name=jerold will return data http://www.acusd.edu/ac/etc/people.shtml?name=magnin will return nothing http://www.acusd.edu/ac/etc/bad.php3?name=magnin will return data The latter URL is for the PHP script that the 'people.shtml' file does an 'include' for. One data point: this user has no name in the password file. This is the only user for which that is true. The user has an entry, but the name field is empty. I don't have access to change the password file, though I've recommended this be changed. Why this would matter only for server-side includes, I don't know, so I don't know that this is really the problem. Now, I guess I'm assuming that this is really a system problem and not a PHP problem. But I'd like to find some way of ensuring that my script doesn't crash when it runs into a problem like this. I have tried: 1. Increasing the maximum memory that PHP allows itself in php3.ini. 2. Putting the posix_getpwnam() call into an 'eval' statement. Neither matters. Has anyone run into anything like this before? Jerry http://www.acusd.edu/~jerry/