External programs ---Grrrrrrrrrrr

ktsirig

Hi all!
I have just installed my first Linux distribution (SUSE 10.0).
Everything is compiled as far as Apache, Mysql & PHP is concerned.
But, I have this problem: I call system commands through PHP using system, shell_exec etc
The thing is that PHP responds OK when it comes to 'ls' or 'grep' or 'wget', but, in another program,
not UNIX-native, there is no response.
I am sure that the program is set up in the PATH, because, if I open a terminal, I can call it from everywhere and it works fine!
Any ideas on why PHP can't call it like 'ls' for example?

One thing that really angries me is that in the University, these things work fine, and the external program is called without any problem.

robert_w_ark

When using shell_exec() make sure you have the full path to the external program. You might also want to try exec() -- http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php

Also some other commands are system() and passthru() (for raw data output)

Hope this helps..

ktsirig

Hi, thanx for your answer.
the program I want to call is a biological one (I am studying biology), that can be installed and ran locally on a UNIX machine.
I have installed it as root user and I have checked that it can also be ran in my home directory, without having to call it from the full path.
However, I tried calling it like /usr/local/bin/hmmpfam (hmmpfam is the name of the program), but again no luck.
What I can only think about has to do with Apache. I mean that, the documents I use are stored in /srv/www/htdocs.
I think that when you ran something in your webserver, this is executed as wwwrun user, right?
do you think I must somehow grant privileges to this user specifically ?
(I just want to note that the html or other files in the htdocs/ directory are functioning correctly. Only that problem with the external program is not executed...)

trey_blancher

I'm getting the same behavior. I've put my bash script into /usr/bin, and even if I put the absolute path in the command, it doesn't execute the script. I've used shell_exec, exec, system, and passthru with no luck whatsoever. These functions worked for the example command,"whoami". I'm using Apache 2.0.54, with PHP 5.0.4, on Fedora Core 4 (kernel 2.6.12).

For the functions that can set the return value, the return value of my bash script is always 1. Running the script from the command line works with no problems. I have double checked the permissions of the script, and they're set to 755, which means it's world readable and executable. Also, I changed the owner and group to be apache/apache, just to make sure that wasn't it.

I'm stumped, and I need this functionality desperately.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the command I'm trying to pass takes some parameters. The shell command I'm trying to run is this:

/usr/bin/sendxmpp-wrapper $msg $jid

I'm guessing that the script parameters are what is causing it to fail. I tried the command with just the $jid parameter, and still it didn't work. I need to be able to pass at least that variable to the script, because I determine the recipient of a message in the PHP script that is supposed to call the bash script. If there's another way to pass parameters to system commands, I'm curious on how to do it.

I've also double checked it twice, and safe_mode is set to off. I read on the PHP manual site that that can cause problems.