[RESOLVED] exec() not running valid command

Thora_Fan

I just installed ImageMagick on my development machine (OS X 10.4.7, Apache 1.3, PHP 4). I am trying to use exec() to call it. I have created a command via PHP:

$cmd = "/usr/local/ImageMagick-6.3.0/bin/convert /Library/WebServer/Documents/one.jpg -resize 250x /Library/WebServer/Documents/photos/two.jpg"
exec($cmd, $output, $retVal);

First off, as I'm sure you've guessed, it's not working. At all. I know ImageMagick is correctly installed because when I run the command via the console, it works perfectly. The "photos" directory is chmod'ed to 777. The paths are correct. I have tested a simple "ls -l ." as the command, that outputs everything just fine.

Is there somehing I'm not doing right? Someting I need to disable or enable? I've gotten this exact code to work on a different server (GoDaddy of all places) so I'm quite certain it's not the code itself. Irregardless, it's annoying. Any help will be appreciated.

etully

I'm pretty sure that the exec() command won't execute if PHP is in safe mode. I don't know if that's the problem here but it's a place to start.

Thora_Fan

Thanks for the reply. I know that exec is working, at least somewhat correctly.

I tried this:

$cmd = "ls -l";
exec($cmd, $output, $retVal);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($output);
echo "</pre>";

and it works just fine.

So basically, I am wondering if maybe there is a permissions issue somewhere. Perhaps on ImageMagick. Do I need to give it permissions somewhere (like in an httpd.conf file) or maybe chown it to www?

MarkR

Steps to fix this:

Log on as the same user the web application runs as. change the current working directory to the same place it will be. Run the identical command from the command line.

This will tell you if there is a permissions problem.

Enable ALL error logging possible. Sometimes errors sent to stderr may go to your Apache error log file- have a look at that

Is it not working on your dev box, production, both etc?

I noticed that you've got some hard-coded absolute paths in that command- what are you going to do if those directories are in a different location on your production box?

Mark

Thora_Fan

Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

I actually don't have it hard coded. The path to ImageMagick is contained within a global config file and the file names are created on the fly. The actual code is:

$cmd = $GLOBALS["ImageMagick"]["Convert"]." $oldFile -resize 250x $newFile";

When echoed to the page, the above prints the $cmd I posted initially (And it's the same one I used when I tested it in the console). I just posted the "hard coded" version here for simplicity.

As far as the dev box/production box, I got the same process running on the production box a while back. I'm just trying to add to it on the dev box for a different app.

Thora_Fan

So I've given the above a try and still no luck. I'm going to be posting in the UNIX forum, as I now believe it's not actually related to PHP.