CGI error when trying to use 'exec()'

beeblemaster

Hi, hope someone can help me with a problem I have.

I am using the command exec to open a program on my local machine and I can't get it to work.

exec("/winnt/system32/test.bat");

I have tried this with PHP 4.0.4, Apache 1.3.14 and PWS on Win NT4 SP6 and Win2K, however it seems on a friends machine running win95.

What happens is I try loading the php page with the exec() command and the browser appears to be waiting for a response... so long that you expect a 404 error, but eventually you get the error:-

CGI Timeout

The specified CGI application exceeded the allowed time for processing. The server has deleted the process.

Cheers,

Beeblemaster.

jblallement

Hi,

You're running windows. Did you tried:

exec("\winnt\system32\test.bat");

beeblemaster

Yes, I have tried that... and had some strange results.

It would not run the batch file, but copied the real path of where my php file is into the HTML page and with nonsense after.

Test.bat contained

echo test
c:\winnt\system32\notepad.exe

and the resulting HTML page displayed, something like

"c:\documents\php\?sbejhj"

Tried this on both NT and 2K.

Cheers,

Paul.

JB Lallement wrote:

Hi,

You're running windows. Did you tried:

exec("\winnt\system32\test.bat");

jblallement

The program execution function in PHP are synchronous and will return when the called process ends.

In your bat file you call notepad.exe and there is no device asociated with the process you can't see the notepad window.

Well, your php script seems to hang because it's waiting for notepad.exe to end. Notepad.exe can't end 'cause you can't see it.

In the tack manager you should see many notepad process.

In order to do what you want, you should run notepad.exe in background which is not easy under Win.