Init.d script hanging - linux

Question

I have an init.d script that looks like:
#!/bin/bash
# chkconfig 345 85 60
# description: startup script for swapi
# processname: swapi
LDIR=/var/www/html/private/daemon
EXEC=swapi.php
PIDF=/var/run/swapi.pid
IEXE=/etc/init.d/swapi
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: swapi
# Required-Start: $local_fs
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6
# Short-Description: startup script for swapi
# Description: startup script for swapi.php which processes actionq into switch
### END INIT INFO
if [ ! -f $LDIR/$EXEC ]
then
echo "swapi was not found at $LDIR/$EXEC"
exit
fi
case "$1" in
start)
if [ -f $PIDF ]
then
echo "swapi is currently running. Killing running process..."
$IEXE stop
fi
$LDIR/$EXEC >> $LDIR/swapi.log & MYPID=$!
echo $MYPID > $PIDF
echo "swapi is now running."
;;
stop)
if [ -f $PIDF ]
then
echo "Stopping swapi."
PID_2=`cat $PIDF`
if [ ! -z "`ps -f -p $PID_2 | grep -v grep | grep 'swapi'`" ]
then
kill -9 $PID_2
fi
rm -f $PIDF
else
echo "swapi is not running, cannot stop it. Aborting now..."
fi
;;
force-reload|restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
*)
echo "Use: /etc/init.d/swapi {start|stop|restart|force-reload}"
exit 1
esac
And then I have a keepalive cronjob that calls this if the pid goes down. Problem is that that keepalive script hangs whenever I run it like a cron job (ie. run-parts /var/www/html/private/fivemin), (the keepalive script being in /var/www/html/private/fivemin).
Is there something funky in my init.d script that I am missing?
I have been racking my brain on this problem for hours now! I am on centos4 btw.
Thanks for any help.
-Eric
EDIT:
The keepalive/cronjob script was simplified for testing to a simple:
#!/usr/bin/php
<?
exec("/etc/init.d/swapi start");
?>
The strange this is the error output from swapi.php is put into /var/spool/mail like normal cron output except that I have all the output being dumped into the swapi.log in the init.d script?
When I run keepalive.php from the cli (as root from /) it operates exactly as I would expect it to.
When keepalive runs ps aux | grep php looks like:
root 4525 0.0 0.0 5416 584 ? S 15:10 0:00 awk -v progname=/var/www/html/private/fivemin/keepalive.php progname {????? print progname ":\n"????? progname="";???? }???? { print; }
root 4527 0.7 1.4 65184 14264 ? S 15:10 0:00 /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/private/daemon/swapi.php
And If I do a:
/etc/init.d/swapi stop
from the cli then both programs are no longer listed.
Swapi ls -l looks like:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 5500 5500 33148 Aug 29 15:07 swapi.php
Here is what the crontab looks like:
*/5 * * * * root run-parts /var/www/html/private/fivemin
Here is the first bit of swapi.php
#!/usr/bin/php
<?
chdir(dirname( __FILE__ ));
include("../../config/db.php");
include("../../config/sql.php");
include("../../config/config.php");
include("config_local.php");
include("../../config/msg.php");
include("../../include/functions.php");
set_time_limit(0);
echo "starting # ".date("Ymd.Gi")."...\n";
$actionstr = "";
while(TRUE){
I modified the init.d script and put init above the variable declarations, it did not make a difference.

Answer 1

The answer was that bash was staying open because my init.d script was not redirecting the stderr output. I have now changed it to
$LDIR/$EXEC &> $LDIR/swapi.log & MYPID=$!
And it now functions perfectly.
Thanks for the help everyone!

Answer 2

When you run a command from cron, the environment is not the same as when it is run from the bash command line after logging in. I would suspect in this case that the sh is not able to understand swapi.php as a PHP command.
Do a
which php
to see where your php binary is and add this to your init.d script
PHP=/usr/bin/php
...
$PHP $LDIR/$EXEC >> $LDIR/swapi.log & MYPID=$!
Probably not that important but you may want to redirect the output from the cron line
0 * * * * /path/to/script 2>&1 >> /dev/null
for instance.

Answer 3

Make sure your script has the correct execution permissions, the right owner, and the first lines should look like this:
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php