exec() command works in command line but not in browser

khendar

Hey guys,

I've got a php script which contains a couple of exec() calls to do a little maintenance (copies log files from servers log directory to the local site directory). The script works fine when I run it from the command line (php exec.php) but not when I load it from the browser.

The code (sanitised for security)

<?php
echo "Copying logs....";
echo exec("cp -v -u /var/www/[rest of sourcepath]/logs/logs* /var/www/[rest of destpath]/logs/");
echo "Copying complete";
?>

Any ideas ?
Cheers.

bradgrafelman

Try forking the process into the background. This will be easy since you're on Unix... just add an ampersand ( & ) at the end of the command ("cp -v .../logs/ &")

Also note that if you're executing the command from the CLI as root, or using elevated priviliges i.e. su/sudo, or something of that nature... you'll have different rights than a web script. The script you're running from the web will run under whoever Apache is configured to run, most commonly "nobody". If the "nobody" user doesn't have permissions on the source and destination then you won't get very far...

khendar

Sorry no luck. Still getting no output - and no files copied. I'm working with a tiny test file at the moment so I doubt that wait time is the problem.

As for the permissions - all the php scripts run under the user "apache". The directory that we are trying to write to is owned by "apache", however the directory above it (which contains the log directory we want to copy to) is owned by the site admin user. However we have made the whole directory world-writable temporarily and it had no effect.

ppowell

I wrote within my portable web apps the ability to work in all environments by parsing in the exact command lines per OS:

if (@!copy(actual_path(realpath($fullFileNameWithPath)), actual_path($newFullFileNameWithPath)) {
 list($copyKommand, $copyRedirect) = @array_values($ap->getKommandOSArray('copy'));
 $msg = exec("$copyKommand \"" . actual_path(realpath($fullFileNameWithPath)) . '" "' . actual_path($newFullFileNameWithPath) . "\" $copyRedirect");
 if ($msg) echo  $msg;
}

Leaving out the obvious, what this does rudimentarily is that it does the PHP-version of copy() first, resolving symlinks via actual_path() and directory structure via realpath(); if it can't do so, then try again by pulling the specific command formatting for copying via OS and spit out any messages that result in the second and final attempt by copying.

Contact me further for details on actual_path() or the method getKommandOSArray() structure.

Phil