Thank you for your reply!

Does $cmd work if you paste it into the shell?

Yes, it works from the shell, running it as root.

the user running the program isn't the same one as your shell

This is the case--when invoked automatically, it's a cgi program and I think the uid/gid is Apache/Apache (but I'll check). It's still not clear to me why with perms set to rwxr-xr-x for everything why it wouldn't work. But at least I think I''m on the right track now.

Thanks again for your help!

Chuck