Problem with Perl and Fedora Core 1

[Dave Mendez]

Hi Everyone,
 
I have been using RH Linux on our network for over 7 years now and we
have been testing out Fedora Core 1 on a machine and have been pleased
so far.  However we have run into a problem that I think is related to
Fedora since we never have had the problem in the Red Hat distros.  The
problem we are having is with Perl 5.8.1.  For the most part Perl works
fine but a lot of our programs in perl use the command "exec" in the
script.  For example here is a line of code from a program called
usersearch.pl:
 
if ($status == 1)
{
            print "Name Found\n";
}
else
{
            exec "namelookup.pl"
}
 
I don't want to get into programming here because this isn't what this
list is for.  However the problem is that Fedora does not execute the
"exec namelookup.pl" command.  If you run the program from the command
line you get nothing like shown below (the status is equal to 0 for
programmers out there):
 
[dave at doc dave]# ./usersearch.pl
[dave at doc dave]# 
 
However, in all other RH distros the program would execute the
namelookup.pl program and you would get this output:
 
[dave at doc dave]# ./usersearch.pl
Enter ID of person:
 
It appears that Fedora is somehow preventing Perl from running the
"exec" command.  I say "appears" because I also believe it could be a
problem with the Perl packages in Fedora but I have the same versions
(Perl 5.8.1) on RH9 and Fedora Core 1.  It works on RH9 but not Fedora.
I have been reading about a new feature in Fedora called "exec-shield"
which looks like it helps prevent programs from running in ceratin
memory areas.  Could this be the source of the problem.  Has anyone else
noticed anything weird with Perl in Fedora? 
Like I said, not sure if it's totally a Fedora problem or Perl problem
but I wanted to start where the only thing I changed was the OS.  Any
help someone could give would be appreciated.
 
Thanks,
 
Dave
 
 
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