<?

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.