I guess you failed to read my admonishment to use <code> tags... Let me make sure I have this right:

#! /usr/bin/perl
print "Hi\n";
`cp -rf /nihad /tmp/`;
[download]

You say that 'nihad' is in 'my root directory'. The use of a possessive bothers me. Some people use 'my root dir' and 'my home dir' interchangeably. Also, since most linux installations have a /root directory (the home dir for user root), that is often what people refer to as the 'root directory'. If, indeed, the file 'nihad' is in the '/' directory, the only reason I can see for it not working is permissions. Does the user you are running the script under have read-permission for both the file 'nihad' and the directory '/'? What happens when you type this command from the shell, as the same user (without the 'f' option, so it will give you an error message if it fails)?

fnord