What's wrong with my exec() statements.

hansF

I'm trying to streamline some processes on my home server. The idea is...

1 - upload some data in the upload directory
2 - convert it with a shell script and put the converted data in the root
3 - load it into a MySQL database

Steps 1 and 3 are working, step 2 not. After uploading I run the following php script from a webpage:

<?php
exec('./convertWSwin.sed upload/data.txt > data.txt');
echo "Data is converted";
?>

This doesn't work. I have been experimenting for two days with commands like..

exec('mv upload/data.txt ./data.txt');

and

exec('cat upload/data.txt > data2.txt);

but nothing works. I've also tried system(), but that also doesn't work. I've also changed the permissions of the file and folder to 777 (don't worry, I've since changed it back), but also to no avail. The uploaded file has the owner www-data and the permission 644.

So, what am I doing wrong here? How can I run a script on an uploaded file?

Thanks for the help.

Hans

halojoy

maybe you can find some examples like yours,
in the posted comments in PHP Manual for [man]exec/man

I have never needed to use exec() myself
so haven't studied this function in special
First, of course you have to checkout [man]phpinfo/man
that you HOST hasn't DISABLED exec() (can be at Free hostings )

regars 🙂
halojoy

NogDog

Start by turning on all error reporting to see if PHP has anything to tell you about it:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Another thing to look for in your settings is whether safe_mode is enabled, and if so what the safe_mode_exec_dir setting is.

hansF

Hello and thanks for the help.

Safe mode is off and I don't get any errors. Hmmm, apart from permissions and paths, what else could my server be doing wrong? I do have /var/www linked to my home directory /home/hans/www, so could that wreak havoc?

Hans