Note that the default permissions parameter is octal! Thus the default of 0666 is NOT the same as 666, or 0x666.
If you specify the permission as decimal 666 then you end up with permissions that prevent the semaphore from being read. The symptom is that you can only sem_get it once, and subsequent sem_get will fail (until you ipcrm or sem_remove it and delete it entirely).
Thus these are all equivalent to the default:
sem_get ( 123, 1, 0666)
sem_get ( 123, 1, 438)
sem_get ( 123, 1, 0x1b6)
Most PHP developers (myself included) work with octal numbers so infrequently that the number 0666 can easily be mistaken as 666 or maybe 0x666.
