Hi Merle,
When I do installations I use the following code to ascertain the existence and permissions of certain system utilities, such as 'wget' used by the dailymail cron task. Copy the following code into a file, ie. test.php, upload it to your site and browse to it.
<?phpecho "<h1>shell_exec</h1>";echo shell_exec('cat /etc/*rele*').'<br>';echo shell_exec('ls -al /usr/bin/wget*').'<br>';echo shell_exec('ls -al /usr/bin/curl').'<br>';echo shell_exec('ls -al /usr/bin/GET').'<br>';echo shell_exec('ls -al /usr/bin/lynx').'<br>';echo shell_exec('ls -al /usr/bin/fetch').'<br>';echo shell_exec('whoami').'<br>';echo shell_exec('groups').'<br>';echo shell_exec('/usr/bin/wget').'<br>';?>
Post the results and I may be able to offer a solution.
Regards