Adding a user in unix via a webpage.

[Anon]

Hi I would like to know, how I could add users to a unix machine using PHP. I have tried with exec("adduser $username"); but it wont add the user, unless I run the file as root in console.

Can it be done with a perl script, which I can start from PHP, or is there nothing to do?

[fandelem]

make sure you check this link out as well:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.escapeshellcmd.php

-kyle

[smileyq]

While you could install PHP as a CGI (not recommended) and then use set-user-id on the scripts I do not recommend this at all. What I generally do is write the contents to file and error check then with with either PHP or perl. I then wrote a perl script that runs on cron to add the new users. This is a more secure method to do this rather that having PHP access to the system from the web page which can cause many problems if you are very secure in how yo program. You should also know that you cannot access the commands like passwd from command line to my knowledge without 1. either using modules or two setup a salt and use crypt to add the passwords. Good luck.