[CentOS] Cron script crashing server...

Hiya, have a bit of an odd problem so looking for thoughts before proceeding
any more.
 Problem is on centos3 (also runs fine on another but fails on another, so
not sure this is an issue or not), dual xeon setup.
 Basically I have a perl script that runs once, first thing every morning,
gathering some stats (currently turned off due to problem). Crontab -l shows
the following...
 00 6 * * * nice /home/statsman/stats/run_stats.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 (.sh file
basically sources with full path a config with some vars, then runs the perl
script).
 There are a couple of other scripts in the crontab which run absolutely
fine, so cron itself seems to be working, its just the combination.
 If I run this (at that time or anytime) via cron, the whole server totally
dies no warning, nothing in logs instantly. If I watch in top waiting for
the cron you don't even see it appear, machine just totally hangs, can't
ping or anything, needs a cold boot. Nothing in logs or anything apart from
bootup info after.
 If I run the perl script outside of cron from any folder at all, it works
fine, never crashes which is where I'm confused, its only as soon as its run
from cron. To test I've put it on a test machine, and to confuse it further
runs absolutely fine under cron (old redhat install though) no matter what I
do, it also seems to run fine on other machines (except one with identical
problem) and runs fine from cron on other linux dists/machines, but can't do
as much testing on them.
 I'm really not sure where the problem lies, so may be offtopic, I'm just
confused why it runs on some and not others (although maybe running the same
version, its possible they were configured slightly different on install),
and pretty much clutching at straws. Worse thing is machines a production
one, and want to keep downtime to a minimum, so trying to get some angle on
what may be wrong before testing more.
 Any thoughts much appreciated.
 Ian
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