Using exec() in php via web - php

Hello i was trying to use exec() in php via web page to execute a file in the root directory, and for some reason none of my commands work except
ls
witch even when i do
ls /root
it doesn't work seems i can only do ls in the current directory or commands like whoami which returns apache
i've tried setting user permissions for apache, and i've tried setting permissions for file or /var/www/html directory and nothing seems to work any ideas?, my basic code below
<?php
command = "ls /root";
exec($command);
?>

The exec command return only the last line of your command.
Like said in the documentation, you should add a second parameter to get the result or use the function passthru

Related

Getting Exit Code 127 (Command not Found) from php exec()

EDIT - Adding new info at the top for visibility. The www-data user can't use the exec() command. All attempts return a 127 error.
I setup a simple script that is just this
<?php
$res = exec("echo EXEC", $res1, $res2);
var_dump($res);
var_dump($res1);
var_dump($res2);
?>
When executed via the application (which of course runs as www-data) this returns the 127 error code.
When executed via this command it runs flawlessly sudo -u root php testExec.php
When executed via this command it again returns the 127 error code sudo -u www-data php testExec.php
Original Question
I can only seem to get the error code 127 back when trying to use the exec command in php. I'm trying to use the https://github.com/rialto-php/puphpeteer package to generate pdfs and it was working flawlessly but I can't find what changed that is causing it to fail now.
I've been using /usr/local/.nvm/versions/node/v14.2.0/bin/node as the path to node but I also tried copying it here /node/v16.14.2/bin so I could give the entire directory structure execute permissions. In either/both places node is owned by www-data (the user that php runs as) and has execute permissions (755).
Running '/node/v16.14.2/bin/node' '/var/www/html/vendor/nesk/puphpeteer/src/get-puppeteer-version.js' (the initial command that puphpeteer generates) from the command line works just fine and returns the expected result "5.5.0" so node is there and executable and the get-puppeteer-version script exists.
After troubleshooting that I decided to just test exec and discovered that that doesn't work for any commands. I've tried just running exec("date"); and exec("echo EXEC") and these also return the same exit code 127.
The disable_functions ini setting is empty (confirmed via empty result from ini_get('disable_functions')). Safe mode is not enabled (confirmed via false result from ini_get('safe_mode')).
If anyone has any insight into why exec won't work at all would be great!
Environment:
Ubuntu 18.04.4
PHP 8.1
So after further investigation.. I found that this was indeed a permissions issue. I had double checked that node and everything in the /bin folder had appropriate execute permissions..
What I had missed (and am not sure how it got changed) was that the /bin folder itself didn't have the appropriate execute permissions. Adding those immediately fixed my issue.

www-data user not able to write to fifo, chmodded 777

I wrote a little PHP script that I'd like to call from Apache. I'm intending to use this to control pianobar.
If I execute the script directly from a root terminal, it works just fine, but if I try to run the script through the web server, nothing.
The fifo I created is at /home/dave/.config/pianobar/piano and the relevant lines in the PHP script look like this...
<?php
system("echo -n 'p' > /home/dave/.config/pianobar/piano"); //'p' pauses pianobar.
echo system('whoami');
?>
If I execute this script in a browser through Apache, it echoes 'www-data www-data' which tells me that safe mode is disabled and the system() command is working, but pianobar keeps playing. If I run this from a root terminal, it echoes back 'root' and pianobar pauses. If I execute this from a terminal under my own username, it echoes back 'dave' and pianobar still pauses.
The fifo I created /home/dave/.config/pianobar/piano was chmodded to 777. What gives? Is this a permissions issue somehow? Is PHP not allowing me to do anything useful with the system() command?
Check folder permissions:
stat --format '%a' /home/dave/.config/pianobar/piano
Set folder permissions for all files inside of folder:
sudo chmod -R 755 /home/dave/.config/pianobar/piano
Try, should work.

Executing .exe file using PHP on Linux server

I'm new in using Linux, I'm trying to write a PHP code which can run .exe linux compatible file, I've made a short shell script
hello bash script:
#!/bin/bash
./program.exe file.mp4 // file.mp4 is an an input for .exe
echo "Hello World!"
shell.php:
<?php
$output = exec ("./hello ");
echo "<pre>$output</pre>";
?>
Now when I run shell.php using web browser it shows Hello World! but the .exe doesn't run, however when I run php using terminal command php shell.php, It works fine.
I think I'm having problems with permissions but I'm new with Linux and I don't know how to solve this.
Update:
I ignored the shell script and I used
<?php
$output = shell_exec ("cd /var/www/ && ./program.exe file.mp4 2>& " );
?>
also I granted access to program.exe
chmod 777 program.exe
the error I receive in the browser :could not open debug.bin!
use the absolute path to hello executable exec("sh path/to/the/file")
I'm using something similar to call an app compiled with mono on a remote ubuntu webserver and return it's output to the calling script.
For any of this to work properly wine needs to be already installed.
On Ubuntu systems try:
sudo apt-get -y install wine
You then need to know the owner of the web server process. If you are running the apache web server try the following:
cat /etc/apache2/envvars | grep "RUN"
The output will look something like this:
export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data
export APACHE_RUN_DIR=/var/run/apache2$SUFFIX
Now that you have the name of the process owner, which in this case is www-data you should ensure the file is owned the user and its group:
sudo chown www-data /var/www/program.exe
sudo chgrp www-data /var/www/program.exe
Finally, we can invoke the application from inside our PHP script by passsing it as a parameter to 'wine' and using its full file path.
<?php
$output = shell_exec("wine /var/www/program.exe file.mp4" );
?>
Any output from the above shell command sent to the command line will be saved in the PHP script variable $output.
It looks like you are trying to do some output redirection with your use of program.exe file.mp4 2>& so I've left that off of the example for clairity.
Try using the absolute path, such as exec("sh /path/to/file")
Generally, php is run as www or apache, so make sure that the execute access permission is granted to all user.

Executing bash script as root from a php script [duplicate]

I want to execute a Bash script present on the system from a PHP script. I have two scripts present on the system. One of them is a PHP script called client.php present at /var/www/html and the other is a Bash script called testscript present at /home/testuser.
My client.php script looks like
<?php
$message=shell_exec("/home/testuser/testscript 2>&1");
print_r($message);
?>
My testscript looks like
#!/bin/bash
echo "Testscript run succesful"
When i do the following on terminal
php client.php
I get the following output on terminal
Testscript run successful
But when i open the page at
http://serverdomain/client.php
I get the following output
sh: /home/testuser/testscript: Permission denied
I get this error even after I did chmod +x testscript.
How do I get it to work from the browser? Please help.
I would have a directory somewhere called scripts under the WWW folder so that it's not reachable from the web but is reachable by PHP.
e.g. /var/www/scripts/testscript
Make sure the user/group for your testscript is the same as your webfiles. For instance if your client.php is owned by apache:apache, change the bash script to the same user/group using chown. You can find out what your client.php and web files are owned by doing ls -al.
Then run
<?php
$message=shell_exec("/var/www/scripts/testscript 2>&1");
print_r($message);
?>
EDIT:
If you really want to run a file as root from a webserver you can try this binary wrapper below. Check out this solution for the same thing you want to do.
Execute root commands via PHP
Without really knowing the complexity of the setup, I like the sudo route.
First, you must configure sudo to permit your webserver to sudo run the given command as root. Then, you need to have the script that the webserver shell_exec's(testscript) run the command with sudo.
For A Debian box with Apache and sudo:
Configure sudo:
As root, run the following to edit a new/dedicated configuration file for sudo:
visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/Webserver
(or whatever you want to call your file in /etc/sudoers.d/)
Add the following to the file:
www-data ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: <executable_file_path>
where <executable_file_path> is the command that you need to be able to run as root with the full path in its name(say /bin/chown for the chown executable). If the executable will be run with the same arguments every time, you can add its arguments right after the executable file's name to further restrict its use.
For example, say we always want to copy the same file in the /root/ directory, we would write the following:
www-data ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /bin/cp /root/test1 /root/test2
Modify the script(testscript):
Edit your script such that sudo appears before the command that requires root privileges(say sudo /bin/chown ... or sudo /bin/cp /root/test1 /root/test2). Make sure that the arguments specified in the sudo configuration file exactly match the arguments used with the executable in this file.
So, for our example above, we would have the following in the script:
sudo /bin/cp /root/test1 /root/test2
If you are still getting permission denied, the script file and it's parent directories' permissions may not allow the webserver to execute the script itself.
Thus, you need to move the script to a more appropriate directory and/or change the script and parent directory's permissions to allow execution by www-data(user or group), which is beyond the scope of this tutorial.
Keep in mind:
When configuring sudo, the objective is to permit the command in it's most restricted form. For example, instead of permitting the general use of the cp command, you only allow the cp command if the arguments are, say, /root/test1 /root/test2. This means that cp's arguments(and cp's functionality cannot be altered).
I was struggling with this exact issue for three days. I had set permissions on the script to 755. I had been calling my script as follows.
<?php
$outcome = shell_exec('/tmp/clearUp.sh');
echo $outcome;
?>
My script was as follows.
#!bin/bash
find . -maxdepth 1 -name "search*.csv" -mmin +0 -exec rm {} \;
I was getting no output or feedback. The change I made to get the script to run was to add a cd to tmp inside the script:
#!bin/bash
cd /tmp;
find . -maxdepth 1 -name "search*.csv" -mmin +0 -exec rm {} \;
This was more by luck than judgement but it is now working perfectly. I hope this helps.
It's a simple problem. When you are running from terminal, you are running the php file from terminal as a privileged user. When you go to the php from your web browser, the php script is being run as the web server user which does not have permissions to execute files in your home directory. In Ubuntu, the www-data user is the apache web server user. If you're on ubuntu you would have to do the following:
chown yourusername:www-data /home/testuser/testscript
chmod g+x /home/testuser/testscript
what the above does is transfers user ownership of the file to you, and gives the webserver group ownership of it. the next command gives the group executable permission to the file. Now the next time you go ahead and do it from the browser, it should work.

How to execute a shell script in PHP?

I have a script in /var/www/myscript.sh which creates folders and runs the command svn update for my projects. I need to execute this script by calling it in a PHP file in the browser (i.e. Localhost/test.php). I tried using functions shell_exec() and exec() but those did not work. I ran my shell script in terminal with su www-data && ./myscript.sh and it worked. What else am I missing?
<?php
$output = shell_exec("./myscript.sh");
?>
Update 5/4/2011:
I added www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL to /etc/sudoers and it works, but this is very insecure. Is there another way to do this?
Several possibilities:
You have safe mode enabled. That way, only exec() is working, and then only on executables in safe_mode_exec_dir
exec and shell_exec are disabled in php.ini
The path to the executable is wrong. If the script is in the same directory as the php file, try exec(dirname(__FILE__) . '/myscript.sh');
You might have disabled the exec privileges, most of the LAMP packages have those disabled. Check your php.ini for this line:
disable_functions = exec
And remove the exec, shell_exec entries if there are there.
Good Luck!
Residuum did provide a correct answer to how you should get shell exec to find your script, but in regards to security, there are a couple of points.
I would imagine you don't want your shell script to be in your web root, as it would be visible to anyone with web access to your server.
I would recommend moving the shell script to outside of the webroot
<?php
$tempFolder = '/tmp';
$webRootFolder = '/var/www';
$scriptName = 'myscript.sh';
$moveCommand = "mv $webRootFolder/$scriptName $tempFolder/$scriptName";
$output = shell_exec($moveCommand);
?>
In regards to the:
i added www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL to /etc/sudoers works
You can modify this to only cover the specific commands in your script which require sudo. Otherwise, if none of the commands in your sh script require sudo to execute, you don't need to do this at all anyway.
Try running the script as the apache user (use the su command to switch to the apache user) and if you are not prompted for sudo or given permission denied, etc, it'll be fine.
ie:
sudo su apache (or www-data)
cd /var/www
sh ./myscript
Also... what brought me here was that I wanted to run a multi line shell script using commands that are dynamically generated. I wanted all of my commands to run in the same shell, which won't happen using multiple calls to shell_exec(). The answer to that one is to do it like Jenkins - create your dynamically generated multi line of commands, put it in a variable, save it to a file in a temp folder, execute that file (using shell_exec in() php as Jenkins is Java), then do whatever you want with the output, and delete the temp file
... voila
If you are having a small script that you need to run (I simply needed to copy a file), I found it much easier to call the commands on the PHP script by calling
exec("sudo cp /tmp/testfile1 /var/www/html/testfile2");
and enabling such transaction by editing (or rather adding) a permitting line to the sudoers by first calling sudo visudo and adding the following line to the very end of it
www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/bin/cp /tmp/testfile1 /var/www/html/testfile2
All I wanted to do was to copy a file and I have been having problems with doing so because of the root password problem, and as you mentioned I did NOT want to expose the system to have no password for all root transactions.

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