command line from PHP

JBagley

Im really struggling with this. Ive searched the web, but I still cant find anything that works. Im running on Windows XP Pro, IIS, and PHP 5.0.2.

I have a test.bat(its located in the local directory that Im running the PHP script from) file that contains:

dir

After searching around, Ive found a couple of people using exec() to execute a command. My php file:

echo exec('test.bat');
exec('test.bat', $output);
echo $output
//Im trying both examples to see if one of them works...

Im getting an "Unable to fork [test.bat]" error. Ive also tried shell_exec() - but that gives the exact same error....

Any help is greatly appreciated....

jackiw

Did you read the PHP Manual? Doesn't seem like...

echo '<pre>';
// Outputs all the result of shellcommand "dir", and returns
// the last output line into $last_line. Stores the return value
// of the shell command in $retval.
$last_line = system('dir', $retval);

// Printing additional info
echo '
</pre>
<hr />Last line of the output: ' . $last_line . '
<hr />Return value: ' . $retval;

jansky

make your command.com accessible
c:\windows\system32 and look for cmd right click on cmd ->go to properties->tab security now change the settings
if the tab security did not show up go to your tools->folder option->view and scroll down to the last line uncheck "simple sharing"

JBagley

Brilliant! Thanks for the help jansky.

Weedpacket

This (allowing your script access to cmd) is of course a potential security hole. But is dir necessary when PHP already provides directory-listing functions?

JBagley

Well, I was just testing it to see if I could get it to work. I need to run some batch file that creates and updates zone files on our server. Thats the reason for it....

How vunerable is the system if I leave it open like this?

JBagley

Ok, now that Ive uploaded the website to our server, Im getting the same errors about forking.

Locally I dont have a firewall running, but on our server we have a Sygate firewall running.

Ive checked all the security settings on cmd.exe and the folder and they are all setup just as my local settings are that work, so could it be the firewall?

LoganK

You can also use backticks to assign the result of a shell command to a variable:

$result = dir;