What system are you running this on? It can make a big difference.

As an aside, this looks extremely suspicious....

my $system_call = '/test/conf.pl';
#
# later ...
#
  if ( $system_call >> 8, 0,       'Normal exit' ){
    print "good\n";}
[download]

Besides shifting a string, that if isn't testing what you probably think it's testing....