exec() help please

Anon

I am trying to run an external program that takes 2 arguments and returns some text data...easy. I'm using this code to try and get it to run.

exec("/home/hlds/hlcmd dod listid", $listid, $retval) or die("can't run");

echo $listid[0];
echo "<br>";
echo $listid[1];
echo $retval;

It dies everytime, I've set permission to 755, on the file, and tried passthru(), and system() functions with same results. Any help would be awesome. TIA

-Mike

Anon

Check your directory permissions. Probably the apache webserver isn't able to enter your homedir. All dirs should be readable for the apache.
Assuming you do use apache 🙂

Anon

The files perms are 777, and I moved it to a web accesible folder that has executable permission set just to be sure file had proper permission. I also chown'd it to apache:apache, I get the same results, 'can't run'. Something I tried off hand though was to run the program via the web browser...I typed in "http://addy/cgi-bin/hlcmd" and it returned the error message it usually does if I don't add any args to it. So I know apache can run it, it's got to be syntax of php or something. Any other ideas? This is command I'm now using.

echo system("/var/www/cgi-bin/hlcmd dod listid", $retval) or die("can't run");

TIA
Mike

Anon

Anybody got any ideas? I've tried a few things, I 've even tried it using back tics....but as soon as I throw in the args...it doesn't respond again.

Anon

Just in case anyone cares....

I found via apache error logs that the program I was trying to run needed an enviorment variable set, so I threw a putenv() just before I ran exec() and low and behold it now works.

maybe this will help someone...

-Mike