Thanks Bjoern,
yes, we considered the possibility of a "fake error" from the command, but this doesn't seem to be the problem. The command actually fails and no output file is created.
I've tried to redirect all the output to a temp file using &>, but the command fails without creating any...
Yes, the command works as expected on the same server both from bash and tclsh.
I was wondering: is there some limitation in privileges for ns_proxy? /tmp/ is world readable, but maybe there are other things ns_proxy is not allowed to do...