"No more svn update before checking first there's no syntax errors", I said to myself. But when I do $ find * ( -name *.php -o -name *.inc )|xargs -n 1 php --syntax-check It never makes it through the whole mediawiki tree, always terminating at a _different file_ with "xargs: php: terminated by signal 11". find -exec, find|while read i...; do php ... $i, all same problem.

Do I need to up the memory limit just to check the syntax of one file?

When I do the same on the mainframe, all works fine.