bash weirdness

[VirginSnow at vfemail.net]

> Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:05:51 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "John Abreau" <jabr at blu.org>

> After I fixed that, "getent group" worked correctly, but the backtick
> and pipe behaviors are still broken.

Sounds like your fork() is somehow broken.  Does running commands in
the background work?  Try something like "xterm &" and see if it runs.
May also be a controlling tty issue.