The following simple external method works fine in Python 2.1.3/Zope 2.5.1 locally, but does not work for files larger than 4000 bytes in the exactly same software configuration on a remote server. The remote server has a lot of free memory and disk space. def filetype(File=''): import os cmd='file -b -' w,r=os.popen2(cmd) w.write(File) w.close() return r.read().strip() This External method is called as follows from a Python Script: Ft = context.filetype(text[:20000]) The Aiieee! error message is: 2002-07-05T17:26:27 ERROR(200) zdaemon zdaemon: Fri Jul 5 10:26:27 2002: Aiieee! 24523 exited with error code: 13 ------ 2002-07-05T17:26:27 INFO(0) zdaemon zdaemon: Fri Jul 5 10:26:27 2002: Houston, we have forked ------ 2002-07-05T17:26:27 INFO(0) zdaemon zdaemon: Fri Jul 5 10:26:27 2002: Houston, we have forked ------ 2002-07-05T17:26:27 INFO(0) zdaemon zdaemon: Fri Jul 5 10:26:27 2002: Hi, I just forked off a kid: 24638 I am perfectly sure that it is the extrernal method that is causing it. When I removed the source code and put a simple "return 'GIF'" in the External method, problem disappeared. Why would it work on a local machine and not work on a remote hosting server? -- Milos Prudek