diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index b11ca75..5bd1af5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@
 - fix expire regression introduced in the "mitigate manual umount" patch.
 - still more on multiply recursive bind mounts.
 - fix tokenizer to distinguish between global option and dn string.
+- fix incorrect return from spawn (Gordon Lack).
 
 1/9/2006 autofs-5.0.1 rc2
 -------------------------
diff --git a/daemon/spawn.c b/daemon/spawn.c
index 579c870..2ede231 100644
--- a/daemon/spawn.c
+++ b/daemon/spawn.c
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ #define ERRBUFSIZ 2047		/* Max length of
 static int do_spawn(logger *log, unsigned int options, const char *prog, const char *const *argv)
 {
 	pid_t f;
-	int status, pipefd[2];
+	int ret, status, pipefd[2];
 	char errbuf[ERRBUFSIZ + 1], *p, *sp;
 	int errp, errn;
 	int cancel_state;
@@ -219,8 +219,8 @@ static int do_spawn(logger *log, unsigne
 			log(LOGOPT_ANY, ">> %s", errbuf);
 		}
 
-		if (waitpid(f, &status, 0) != f)
-			status = -1;	/* waitpid() failed */
+		if (waitpid(f, &ret, 0) != f)
+			ret = -1;	/* waitpid() failed */
 
 		if (use_lock) {
 			status = pthread_mutex_unlock(&spawn_mutex);
@@ -230,7 +230,7 @@ static int do_spawn(logger *log, unsigne
 		pthread_sigmask(SIG_SETMASK, &oldsig, NULL);
 		pthread_setcancelstate(cancel_state, NULL);
 
-		return status;
+		return ret;
 	}
 }