Weird PHP problem - scripts won't work

I'm running the following
WHM 11.2.0 cPanel 11.10.0-R16448
CENTOS Enterprise 4.5 x86_64 - WHM X v3.1.0

[root@yakko www]# php -v
PHP 5.1.6 (cli) (built: Aug 28 2007 13:50:42)
Copyright (c) 1997-2006 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2006 Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader v3.1.32, Copyright (c) 2002-2007, by ionCube Ltd., and
with Zend Extension Manager v1.2.0, Copyright (c) 2003-2006, by Zend Technologies
with Zend Optimizer v3.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007, by Zend Technologies

The problem I'm having is really weird and I've used Apache Update to recompile with different versions of php. 5.1.6 seems the most stable.

When someone adds a new php file to their public_html folder, and they browse to it they get a Premature end of script headers, they can hit refresh any number of times and it's the same error. But if they wait 5 or so minutes, the script seems to work fine.

Anyone know why this is happening?

thanks
-matt

 

Does anyone know what's going on? I can post more information about the server if you let me know what you need to see.

 

Yes, I can reproduce with every user on the system. Every time a new php file is created it does this and fixes itself 5 - 10 minutes later. It's not a binary/ascii problem, because I've even created files through vi and it does it.

I'll try taking Zend out and see what that does. I've tried removing IonCube and that doesn't make a difference.

 

Removing Zend doesn't make a difference either

 

could it be that new php files are getting created as chmod 775? I just changed to 755 and they seemed to work fine.