I have the code and everything which is:
pkill python
However I wanted to run it from a php script like this:
echo shell_exec("pkill python");
I get an output which says:
bash: pkill: (1503) - Operation not permitted
I know what the problem is, which is that pkill is su command. Anyway to change this so that the php script can run it?
The problem is, that the process you want to kill does not belong to the apache user (apache usually runs as www-data with group www-data). If you give apache more rights (say run it as user root), your PHP script would run with more rights and could do things like this. But this would be dangerous, because if there is a security flaw in apache or your php script, a malicious attacker could take over your system.
Instead I suggest using the setuid bit.
Create a file kill.sh with the content pkill python
Make it executable (chmod a+x kill.sh)
Make it belong to root (chown root:root kill.sh)
Make it setuid (chmod u+s kill.sh)
Invoke this script from your php script
Related
I have a shell script, which when executed, makes some folders and copies files into them. I also have a node.js "program", which does exactly what the shell script does.
When I call the shell script using PHP's shell_exec, I get a permission error, which basically says that the shell script does not have privileges to make folders. I did some googling and turns out I'd have to setup passwordless sudo and who knows what else trickery to fix this.
However, I made an exact same thing with node and when I run the node "program" by calling it with shell_exec just like before and it seems that this node "program" has the rights to do whatever.
What is the reason behind this? Why do "programs" have privileges when ran, but shell scripts do not? Is this a legitimate way to do, for example, file system operations (calling something made with node.js from PHP)? Because it is annoying to fiddle with the permission if I try to do the same operations with PHP.
Php was run by apache or something similar and is run under user www-data or http or something like that. Your node server probably runs under piwwoli user. piwwoli can create a directory under /home/piwwoli, but www-data can't.
Both programs and shellscripts have privileges when they run, the question is who is running them.
You can create a directory that is writeable both by www-data and piwwoli:
mkdir /path/to/dir
chmod o+w,g+w /path/to/dir
chown piwwoli.www-data /path/to/dir # maybe you'll need sudo for this to work
I have dug through everything I can find on the topic of starting a screen from PHP. I'm starting a game server, so I must run it from a specific user so that the server executable looks in the right folder for its other files. I have changed Apache's user from its default to the user I must run the server from. When I have exec('cd /User/FolderWithScript && bash script.sh); to emulate what I would do to start it, it doesn't report any errors in /var/log/apache2/error.log, but also doesn't start the server or its screen.
The same thing happens if I were to use exec('cd /User/FolderWithExecutable && screen -dmS ServerExcutable +Args'); which is essentially what the script does.
If I use exec(cd /User/FolderWithScript && bash ServerExcutable +Args); it spits out all of the usual stuff for the server in /var/log/apache2/error.log, but unfortunately also appears to be looking in the wrong directory for most of the game files, which are located in /User/.game.
Thanks!
I had to add in my sudoers file www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /Path/To/Script and then in PHP run exec('cd /Path/To/Script(AndExecutable) && sudo -u User /Path/To/Script); Basically, It wouldn't run correctly unless I ran the script from the folder the executable was in, and it wouldn't run unless I used the entire path to the script as entered in my sudoers file.
I've recently set up my Apache2 Server on my Linux machine. Now I've wanted to execute a PHP script (index.php), which runs a shell script (foo.sh), which creates a folder in my home directory, but the directory was not created.
These are the original two files:
foo.sh:
#!bin/bash
mkdir /home/lorenzo/testDir
index.php:
<?php
exec('sh test.sh');
?>
So, I thought maybe the problem occurs because of privileges or something, and indeed after I changed the files to that:
foo.sh:
#!bin/bash
echo "Hello world"
index.php:
<?php
$temp=exec('sh test.sh');
echo $temp;
?>
I saw the output Hello World on my website.
So the PHP script is executed and it runs the shell script. But why can't the shell script execute the mkdir command?
This indeed is most likely a permission issue.
You first have to figure out which user apache runs at. This is usually www-data (on Debian-ish Linuxes, such as Ubuntu) or apache (on RedHat-ish Linuxes) or something along the lines. A ps -eF | grep apache will reveal the user.
After you figured that out, make sure that the apache user has the appropriate rights in your home directory. You can either add it to your user group (using usermod -a -G ... and then chmod g+w ~) or allow writing for all users (chmod o+w ~).
But, both of this is a bad idea. Your php script (or anything else running as the apache user) can be broken into and cracked, leaving you home directory open for malicious attackers to modify and rm -rf.
In addition, if you’re running a RedHat-ish Linux, you will run into SELinux which by defaut prevents apache from accessing user directories at all. In that case, you also have to set setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs on.
Instead, I would recommend that you use a different directory and give your user full access to that. Something along the lines of /var/www/testDir with the apache as owner and group, and adding yourself to the apache user group is probably a sane idea.
It looks like a permission issue. Make sure that Apache has write permission to that directory
You may have permission issues on the server. Try to use chmod -R 775 <dirname>(or 777) in your ssh command line. You can do this in php code with chmod() too but I don't suggest you because it would run it everytime the php code runs and changing it more times is pointless. It can output to the screen but I bet the directory the script wants to make file has permission 755. Try to check it.
I have a php script that calls a python script which in turn is in charge of writing some files to disk.
If I execute the php script by entering its url in the web browser it can perform several filesystem related tasks:
it's able to create a dir
it's able to chmod the dir
but it's not able to execute the python script which would create and write other files.
The strange thing is that if I run the python script manually as www-data:
user#host $ sudo su www-data
passwd for sudo:
$ whoami
www-data
$ python my_script.py
It works like a charm.
I'm assuming the user when I run the script through the browser is www-data. So why is the result in the console any different?
SOLVED:
Python script starts off by importing some modules from my repository, which are appended to the path via .bashrc or .bash_profile on login consoles. These modules were not available from the browser to the user www-data. So adding this to the python script solved it:
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, 'path_to_my_modules')
solved it.
I apologize for the question. It didn't bring all the necessary information for users to lead to a solution. I guess the problem was so broad that it was difficult for me to start thinking of where its root was.
I lacked a good debugging technique to see what the error was. I commented out all the python script and begun with a simple print 'here'. Uncommenting lines one by one showed me the place where it just didn't print anything anymore (the error was obvious then).
First of all, don't assume that the user is www-data. You should get the output from whoami running from the PHP script to see if it is www-data. Also, you need to make sure your script has +x or execute permissions for the user.
You should read about execute permissions.
You need to use chown on your PHP script to change the ownership to the www-data user:
sudo chown www-data:www-data yourscript.php
Then you need to give the user execute permissions:
sudo chmod u+x yourscript.php
I have a couple of bash scripts on a Centos box which I use to do basic server admin stuff like restart services, etc. I run these as a standard user who is also the scripts' owner.
I tried to run these using shell_exec() in PHP, with the apache user, but it simply doesn't work - I'm guessing it doesn't have enough permissions (even with 775 and being in the correct group!) to run everything I want it to.
I've tried editing the sudoers file giving apache permission to run the script calls but it still doesn't work and has no error messages that I can see.
Any thoughts? How can one trigger a script from a web page which requires a different user to run?
check under which user is running apache ( for debian it is www-data)
add www-data in sudoers list with permission to execute files that you like
check which shell has www-data user in /etc/passwd (you will need to give valid shell)
run script with /bin/bash -x (it will output for sure)
Make sure safe mode is off. Also verify the user is the one you expect:
<?php echo exec('whoami'); ?>