For maderman 's particular problem, I don't think your "debug" print out would tell him anything useful.

I think I would do

   my $output = `uptime.pl`; # or qx/ /
   print $output
[download]

or

   my $exit_status = system( "uptime.pl" );
   print $exit_status;
[download]

first to make that the uptime.pl script is in fact running