popen() doesn't for me

[gowen]

popen() just won't work for me, and there is no debug info to
indicate why in the server logs. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Any suggestions for debugging? Ways to get more info out of "Resource
#2" as shown in the script below?

Safe mode is set to off (verified with php_info, shown via ini_get
below). The server is not chrooted (I can stat the exe in question, as
shown below).

PHP version is 4.3.3 with the following configure line:

../configure --disable-safe-mode --with-imap --with-imap-ssl \
--with-kerberos --with-dom --with-mcrypt --with-zlib --with-apxs

Running as an apache 1.3.27 module under RedHat 7.2.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Test script:

<?PHP
echo "safe_mode is set to " . ini_get("safe_mode") . "<br>\n";
$size = stat("/bin/ls");
echo $size[7] . "<br>\n";
$fp = popen("/bin/ls", "r");
echo "'$fp'; " . gettype($fp) . "<br>\n";
while ($s = fgets($fp,1024)) {
echo $s;
}
echo "s is #$s#<br>\n";
pclose($fp);
?>
Output:

safe_mode is set to 0<br>
45948<br>
'Resource id #2'; resource<br>
s is ##<br>
Verification of /bin/ls size:

$ ls -l /bin/ls
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 45948 Aug 9 2001 /bin/ls*
--
gowen -- Greg Owen -- gowen-news at swynwyr.com
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