hi guys, hopefully someone here can help.. I have trawled every forum and googled for a week now, and still cant get this fixed.. I have CentOS4.2 installed, with apache2 and php4 rpm installs. httpd is running under user apache. I have full control over the server. DocumentRoot is set to /var/www/html my php page I am trying to execute is this simple one:sr.php <? shell_exec("/tmp/ls.sh > /tmp/output") ?> when I load sr.php in a browser, nothing happens. ( I am not expecting anything on screen, but /tmp/output never gets created). a tail of /var/log/http/error_log shows sh: /tmp/ls.sh: Permission denied now, /tmp has 777 perms, and if I run su -c "/tmp/ls.sh" apache the file /tmp/output gets created. if I change sr.php to <? shell_exec("ls > /tmp/output") ?> the file /tmp/output gets created! so it appears php will run system commands, but not user scripts. Any ideas as to why I can not run user scripts from within PHP?? This has got me utterly beaten.. Thanks in advance note: I do have semi-colons at the end my code, but everytimeI tried and posted with one, the page wouldnt submit, and gave me an error on the forum edit: php isnt producing any error logs, but this is from the syslog.. Mar 28 15:05:26 dell2 kernel: audit(1143554726.143:86): avc: denied { execute } for pid=5652 comm="sh" name="ls.sh" dev=dm-0 ino=4898845 scontext=root:sy stem_r:httpd_sys_script_t tcontext=root:object_r:tmp_t tclass=file Mar 28 15:05:26 dell2 kernel: audit(1143554726.143:87): avc: denied { getattr } for pid=5652 comm="sh" name="ls.sh" dev=dm-0 ino=4898845 scontext=root:sy stem_r:httpd_sys_script_t tcontext=root:object_r:tmp_t tclass=file Mar 28 15:05:26 dell2 kernel: audit(1143554726.144:88): avc: denied { getattr } for pid=5652 comm="sh" name="ls.sh" dev=dm-0 ino=4898845 scontext=root:sy stem_r:httpd_sys_script_t tcontext=root:object_r:tmp_t tclass=file