splitting up an array into lines ...

I want this code to work thru a large cluster and put the rpm information into a db , it all works apart from the foreach loop. why doesnt my code work ( in particular the foreach loop ) , // get hostname $host = hostname; // get a list of rpms $rpm_list = rpm -qa; // open a db connection and insert them into the db include "db.php"; print "working on host : $host\n"; $test = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM machine_info WHERE host = '$host'"); $test1 = mysql_fetch_object ($test); print "TEST: $test1->host\n"; if ($test1->host == "") { print "machine doesnt exists in the db , adding an entry for $host\n"; $add_machine_to_table = mysql_query("INSERT INTO machine_info (host) VALUES ('$host')"); } // get the rpm list a line at a time foreach($rpm_list as $rpm) { $query = "UPDATE machine_info SET rpm = '$rpm' WHERE host = '$host'"; if (!(mysql_query($query))) { print "Mysql could not do the update query - for host $host"; } } ------------ i get : X-Powered-By: PHP/4.0.6 Content-type: text/html working on host : lxplus038 TEST: lxplus038 <br> <b>Warning</b>: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in <b> get_rpm_info.php</b> on line <b>29</b><br> -- many thanx in advance Neil :)