Host command fails if there is a database connection

[astroboy]

Here's a real weird one. I can successfully invoke SQL*Plus (Oracle's SQL shell) from a Perl script. However, if I create a DBI connection first, it fails. The SQL script, test.sql:

select sysdate from dual;
exit

and the perl script:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:Oracle:', 'scott', 'tiger', {RaiseError =>
+ 1}) || die DBI::errstr;

my @cmd =  (
          'sqlplus',
          '-s',
          'SCOTT/tiger',
          '@test.sql'
        );

my $output = qx{@cmd};
my $retcode = $?;

if ($? == -1) {
    die "Error: $?: $!";
}

print $output;

which dies with:

Error: -1: No child processes at ./test.pl line 17.

However if I comment line 4, it works! Now it works for me on an older system. The differences are:

older system: Perl 5.10.0, DBI 1.609,DBD::Oracle.1.23, Centos 5.4, Oracle 11g release 1

new system: Perl 5.10.1, DBI 1.609, DBD::Oracle.1.23, Centos 5.4, Oracle 11g release 2

To try and eliminate Perl, I used the vendor version (5.8) on the new system. The only thing I can guess is that the version of Oracle makes a difference. But before I go to all of the trouble of reinstalling Oracle, I'm wondering if anyone can offer a reason for my problem, and a solution.

Note: the actual code in my app uses IPC::Cmd to handle the external command call (and deal with stderr and stdout, etc). I simply use qx{} the test case above to illustrate the unerlying problem. In the real code, the SQL script runs without error, but the return status is always -1