[RESOLVED] Linux and PHP

[tito]

Is it possible to execute a Linux command line with a PHP script?

[gardnc]

Yes if your sever is configured to allow executables to be executed in scripts. For the most part the security risks outweigh the benefits of such actions and thus are generally prohibited on public servers and those with professional sysadmins. Some of the more commonly necessary commands are available as functions in PHP, i.e. chmod, to help bypass the need to execute commands directly.

[tito]

Basically the server is mine. How can I check for that config? All I want to do is to open a file, read it, write to it and then execute a coommand line to encode it e.g. ./ioncube_encoder foo --into foo2 then do a zip -r foo2 foo2

[gardnc]

It's been a long time since I admin'ed a Linux server, but I believe the biggest issue was the user account under which PHP is executed itself. If it was an account that had execute permissions for the root folder than contained the executable, i.e. /usr/bin, then they would run.

Seems I recall some servers where a special bin folder was created in the the user's space and the various commands that need to be run were placed there with permissions for their use.

Hope that helps.

[tito]

I got it sorted out with

shell_exec();

Thanks

[gardnc]

Sorry, I thought you were using the function and it was not working for you.

[Horizon88]

Don't forget to mark this resolved 😉