Authentication with PHP

[scdean]

I am trying to make a page that will run a shell script on a machine.

I have this working fine as follows

exec('/home/scripts/backup-files');

The problem however is this script is executed as apache and therefore in certain cases the permissions are wrong.

(I want to use it to shutdown a program running under user abc and then restart it as user abc)

I have tried using apache authentication but that doesn't seem to effect it.

Any help much appreciated

[sglane]

The only way I can think of is to run apache as a user with more permissions. Or just copy the entire apache directory to a different dir, change the port it listens on, and change the user.