[SATELLITE] - Why remote command execution from Satellite fails with 'return_code: 256'

Issue

• Remote command execution is failing on some systems, error is independent of the executed command and filesystem path. Here is the error message from rhn_check on the client,

D: do_call script.run(41602, {'username': 'root', 'groupname': 'root', 'now': '2012-10-23 15:04:22', 'timeout': 600, 'script': '#!/bin/sh\ntouch /tmp/foo\n'}){'cache_only': None}
D: Sending back response(1, 'Script failed', {'output': '', 'base64enc': 1, 'process_end': '2012-10-23 15:04:22', 'return_code': 256, 'process_start': '2012-10-23 15:04:22'})

return code 256 means that the function waitpid(), which waited for the script to finish, failed and returned a code -1, which is in unsigned form equal to the number 256.