PGP/GPG + PHP4 + Apache == no output

noahb

Hi everybody. I've been fighting with both pgp and gpg and php4/apache for some time now. My problem is this: On attempting to encrypt data, whether from file or pipe, I get no output from the programs. When I say no output, I literally mean no output, nothing, even when I direct the stream to a file. I realize mod_php runs as nobody, and I have allowed access to the filesystem where needed, and I can view my keyrings. Within a shell, I can use the exact command line (with full paths) and get output any way I proceed. I move this command to the PHP, and I get nothing. It's been almost 2 weeks of fighting with this, and I hope I'm just missing something small. If anybody has seen/fixed this problem, please respond.

Thanks

aliziad

I am trying
echo secret | gpg -e -a -r ali@pij.org

and it works on the command line producing the ascii armored encrypted "secret"

In PHP I tried system(), exec() and PassThru() but i couldnt get any output !(
BUT, if I simply do a System("gpg --help") I do get the gpg help screen outputed back through the system() call in my webpage.

So, (1) PHP knows where to find and execute pgp, and (2) the command i used works fine on the command line ::

any suggestions !?!?!?

noahb

Well.. I figured out my problem, so I'll assume yours is similar because the symptoms are exact. On freebsd, I did chown nobody:root on all the related files and directories. Now it works properly.

Anon

Hi Noah,

I'm still having the same problem you described whereby I can execute gpg from the command line but as soon as I try to execute GPG from within a PHP script using the system command I get no output.

What did you mean by chown nobody:root for all related files. Which files are these? I'm still not sure what you did.

Any help would be very much appreciated as I'm getting nowhere fast !!

Christine

Anon

Hi Christine,

Have you worked out the encryption output problem. I have toying around with this for weeks and zip.

Could you share any revelations 🙂

Thanks,
Peter

Anon

Sorry Peter,

I've left this problem for awhile as I had no joy with it. Will be revisiting it again in a couple of weeks as I need to solve it for a particular website. If I find a solution I'll let you know.

Christine

Anon

Christine,

I'd like to share what I learned today which may apply to you.

My problem is that php scripts run under the web server's user ID which does not have permision to execute PGP. CGIwrap could possibly allow the web server to execute PGP, however my server host will not support/install CGIwrap.

I am moving to another host and will start all over using GPG and am keeping my fingers crossed.

Should you develop a solution on your side, please keep me informed.

Thanks,
Peter

Anon

I solved this before... (on freebsd)
FreeBSD 4 was running apache as 'nobody'. The problem with that was that 'nobody' didn't have access to the various key files for gpg. Simple fix really.. chown the key dirs to nobody:nobody
and make sure everything in there is chmod'd for ONLY nobody
This will allow apache to launch gpg thru php, and encrypt your stuff properly.

Good luck, and sorry I did not reply sooner.

Anon

Now looking back at this thread.. I guess I did chown nobody:root for all the gpg key files and dir and everything.. There should be the dir something like .gpg for the keyring, etc. chown the dir, and chown the files within the dir.. make sure you chmod the files for only nobody. Good luck again... It's pretty slick once you get it working right.

Anon

Noah,

Could you send me a snippet of the PHP code you are running that executes gpg to encrypt some data/file ?

Many thanks,
Peter Morrissette