Why this: rsync -avz -e ssh /home/userneme/folder [email protected]:/var/www/folder works from cronjob and this: exec("rsync -avz -e ssh /home/userneme/folder [email protected]:/var/www/folder"); doesn't work. I know exec is working because i have a few places in my appp that do convercion from pdf to jpg with ImageMagick (exec). SOLVED exec is working OK it was a permission issue on remote server. "Local" server is shared reseller account and remote server is my first VPS Ubuntu 10.10 LAMP box. If only I had a system administrator since i'm just a software developer forced to do this and i stink at it :) Thank You all!