exec()/system() and htpasswd

[Anon]

I have an online PHP/MySQL system which is password protected with .htaccess

What I want to do is set up a page so that users can change their password online. I've got it all worked out how to do it, the only problem is running the system command. What I want to do is this:

system("htpasswd -b /path/to/passwdfile username newpassword");

Doesn't work. Neither does exec() or passthru(). Now the really weird thing is none of them even pass me back an error message. Any other unix command will work and pass thru any output generated. I've tried putting the full path to htpasswd, I've run the command from the commandline as "nobody" (my httpd id) and that works fine, so I don't think the problem is permissions or path related.

AARGH! I can't be the first person to want to do something like this. Any ideas? Anyone?

[Anon]

It might be a permissions problem. This is just a guess, but try to figure out what your webserver\'s user-name is (usually nobody, or www-data). Then \'su root\', log in as root, then \'su nobody\', which should not prompt you for your password.

Try typing your commands there, and you should be able to see what the web-server is doing.

Also maybe check the server logs for errors. On my system: \'cat /var/log/apache/error.log\' will do the trick.

HTH!

--Robert