I am running a cookie-cutter r-script from the command-line using the php5.3 exec function. The idea being that the user selects data, php runs the script, and the user is able to download the high resolution graphic. I've run this on my local testbed with apache and everything worked fine, however, the production server is Windows Server 2003 with IIS7 (something I cannot control). It seems with IIS7, by default, php does not have access to cmd.exe. We've tried changing permission to cmd.exe with the "calcs" command with no success.
How do I give php permission to access the command-line through the use of the exec function?
P.S. I know, I know, I know. No user input is being executed with the exec function. We just want to take advantage of R's high resolution graphics and data processing capabilities.
Relevant Details:
OS is windows server 2003 64-bit
IIS7
The server is an Amazon EC2 instance
(I don't believe this to be an issue with Amazon as I've heard of people do similar things with a LAMP stack Amazon instance)
EDIT: the problem ended up being that for some reason IUSR did not have permission to use the "start" command in command-line.
REM commands below did not work
start "Path to .exe" "File to process"
start "" "Path to .exe" "File to process"
REM this one did however
"Path to .exe" "File to process"
It's an IIS issue i think (You could install one locally to test it) but if you run with anonymous authentication you need to change the anonymous user to a regular user (which will have privileges to launch cmd.exe). Also check the identity of the application pool user, since sometime it runs with a limited account too.
Related
i have used simple PHP script to execute exe file through php script, below is my PHP code
<? exec('"C:\Windows\notepad.exe"');?>
my problem is, when i check task manager after executing above code, notepad.exe is there but it is not diplaying
same way if i execute below mentioned code
<? exec('"C:\Program Files\WinSCP\WinSCP.exe"'); ?>
task manager shows WinSCP.exe, but winscp is not diplaying
can anyone tell me why applications are not showing ?
Whatever your web server is (Apache, Nginx, IIS...) it's clearly not configured to run with the credentials of your administrator user account. That's the sensible default. Background services are designed to run unattended.
You have several choice, from worse to better:
Kill security in your web server configuration. If web server runs as service, open Windows Service Manager and configure it to run with your account (don't forget to come back here if you change your password in the future). This way you allow any stranger in your computer, local network and/or internet to run programs in your name, in this case Notepad and WinSCP.
If the web server allows it, run it from a command-prompt in your own session. It's similar to #1 but will at least not run 24/7.
Any of the above, with a restricted account.
Don't use a web server. PHP can run from the command-line just fine, what means that you can even create a *.bat file and assign an icon to it.
As about your code, when it finally works your script will sleep until you close Notepad. This can be a bug or a feature depending on your needs.
Had the same problem with WAMP 2.4 & windows XP, the following helped:
Win+R, services.msc
edit wampapache and wampmysqld to allow affecting desktop.
Alternatively you can try:
Win+R, services.msc
edit wampapache and wampmysqld to log on as the same user.
We have a small office intranet, built in PHP (on an apache server - so WAMP), that allows us to create project folders on our file server. This works by copying a set of template folders to a new location using the shell exec xcopy command and the following switches /e /k /i /c.
We (fairly) recently upgraded to a new file server running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard. Now the xcopy command no longer works from within PHP. However, I know that the xcopy command is correct because it works if I copy and paste it into a command prompt (on the same machine).
I can see no error message but I assume this is some kind of permissions issue related to the PHP 'user', but I don't know exactly what or how to solve it.
The apache server and the file server are two separate machines. If it's relevant, the apache server is a 32bit machine and the file server is a 64bit machine but, as I say, I can invoke the xcopy command from the CLI of the 32bit machine without a problem.
The Apache process user name is SYSTEM (although I can't seem to use the 'whoami' command to check this)
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
FWIW, the exec string looks like this...
echo "xcopy \"\\\\path\\to\\folder\\xxxx_Project\\*.*\" \"\\\\path\\to\\folder\\9876_NEWPROJECT\" /e /k /i /c";
which (I think) materializes as this...
xcopy "\\path\to\folder\xxxx_Project\*.*" "\\path\to\folder\9876_NEWPROJECT" /e /k /i /c
Obviously, the '9876_NEWPROJECT bit is really a variable.
OK. I seem to have got it working. Here's what I did - tell me if it's a bad idea although I should point out that this is an intranet so I'm a little less concerned about security...
Go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools_>Services
Select the Apache service and hit Properties
On the Log On tab, click 'This account:' instead of 'Local System account', and then find the User account of Windows user who's normally logged on to that terminal
Restart Apache
I also amended the user info in the httpd.conf file, but I'm not actually certain that that was necessary.
If there's a better solution, that can be explained in words of two syllables or less, I'm all ears!
get_current_user() will confirm the user your script runs as.
Then try to manually execute your command as this user with runas (or if your user really is SYSTEM then you will need something like psexec to do so).
Now, assuming that your script actually runs as SYSTEM, it is very likely that this user is not authorised on the remote file server. I don't think it is even possible to do that (except, perhaps, by allowing "Everyone"). If it is, I am not sure this is a good idea anyways.
I would instead run the apache service as a regular user, and on the file server, grant access to this user.
Alternatively, you could mount the remote location as a network drive (not tested, other answers in the thread might help too).
We have a small office intranet, built in PHP (on an apache server - so WAMP), that allows us to create project folders on our file server. This works by copying a set of template folders to a new location using the shell exec xcopy command and the following switches /e /k /i /c.
We (fairly) recently upgraded to a new file server running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard. Now the xcopy command no longer works from within PHP. However, I know that the xcopy command is correct because it works if I copy and paste it into a command prompt (on the same machine).
I can see no error message but I assume this is some kind of permissions issue related to the PHP 'user', but I don't know exactly what or how to solve it.
The apache server and the file server are two separate machines. If it's relevant, the apache server is a 32bit machine and the file server is a 64bit machine but, as I say, I can invoke the xcopy command from the CLI of the 32bit machine without a problem.
The Apache process user name is SYSTEM (although I can't seem to use the 'whoami' command to check this)
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
FWIW, the exec string looks like this...
echo "xcopy \"\\\\path\\to\\folder\\xxxx_Project\\*.*\" \"\\\\path\\to\\folder\\9876_NEWPROJECT\" /e /k /i /c";
which (I think) materializes as this...
xcopy "\\path\to\folder\xxxx_Project\*.*" "\\path\to\folder\9876_NEWPROJECT" /e /k /i /c
Obviously, the '9876_NEWPROJECT bit is really a variable.
OK. I seem to have got it working. Here's what I did - tell me if it's a bad idea although I should point out that this is an intranet so I'm a little less concerned about security...
Go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools_>Services
Select the Apache service and hit Properties
On the Log On tab, click 'This account:' instead of 'Local System account', and then find the User account of Windows user who's normally logged on to that terminal
Restart Apache
I also amended the user info in the httpd.conf file, but I'm not actually certain that that was necessary.
If there's a better solution, that can be explained in words of two syllables or less, I'm all ears!
get_current_user() will confirm the user your script runs as.
Then try to manually execute your command as this user with runas (or if your user really is SYSTEM then you will need something like psexec to do so).
Now, assuming that your script actually runs as SYSTEM, it is very likely that this user is not authorised on the remote file server. I don't think it is even possible to do that (except, perhaps, by allowing "Everyone"). If it is, I am not sure this is a good idea anyways.
I would instead run the apache service as a regular user, and on the file server, grant access to this user.
Alternatively, you could mount the remote location as a network drive (not tested, other answers in the thread might help too).
I'm using PDFTK to merge some PDFs on my Amazon EC2 instance running Windows Server and IIS7.
When I try running PDFTK using PHP exec(), it does not work. For example:
<?php
$e = exec("pdftk");
var_dump($e); //output is: string(0) ""
?>
I can get other commands to work using exec such as exec("ping 192.168.2.1") but I can't get PDFTK working.
I can also run pdftk from DOS command line, so I know it's installed properly.
I also set the permissions to pdftk.exe to full access for all users (thinking this was a permissions issue).
I remember having a similar problem when I installed PDFTK on another Windows Server Amazon EC2 instance, but I forgot exactly what I needed to change. I thought it had something to do with IIS_USR Permissions but it was a while back and I don't remember the specifics.
Thank you.
The application either needs to be in the same directory as the script, or within the $PATH environment variable for the user executing the PHP script. With IIS, this is not the user you are logged in with.
i read so many similar questions but nothing works with me
im using wamp 2.2 ,Apache 2.0 , PHP V5.3.8
safe_mode=off - disabled_functions deleted from php.ini i'm trying to exec
exec("chrome.exe google.com");
nothing happens and when i try
exec("calc");
the windows shows weird message to execute calc in different user although i changed the user for the apache service to Administrator and i verify the user using
exec("whoami");
where is the problem?
Environment path for CMD and php shell might not be the same.
You either have to give entire path of the file, or export the path of chrome.exe in php first
Also, I believe that chrome.exe opening a page requires XServer, php can't open graphical interfaces in shell. These commands are not passed to actual shell as a parent, so php file can't "launch" applications for you.
Please read specifics of the exec function:
PHP exec Reference
Also try adding 2> errors.txt to see what are the errors if any in the execution of the programme.
--
The program needs to know what X server to connect to, and it needs to have permissions to connect to that server. You specify the X server with the DISPLAY environment variable; this will usually be set automatically if you are running the PHP program from a terminal in
X, or from a GNOME panel or something similar; however, if you are running the PHP script in some other manner, it likely won't know what X server to connect to.
X has various ways of specifying permission to connect to a server, but the most common one is using a file called ".Xauthority" in the users home directory. Because only the user who is logged in at the X server can read this file, they are the only user who can run GUI programs. So, if you start the PHP user as the same user who is logged in at the X server, you shouldn't have any problem with permissions. However, if the PHP program is running as a different user, you will have to give that user permission to access the X server.
Reference: http://bytes.com/topic/php/answers/838364-cant-launch-graphical-apps-php-exec-ubuntu-8-04-system
(I know that link is for linux and won't have exact same solution for Windows, but exec() still needs to know which X interface to refer to)
Stop Apache running as a service.
When windows runs a service it it is not running directly as the user that started the server or manages due to this it could well be starting chrome in a service environment so you wont see it load on your desktop there are 2 ways to get around this
Stop apache service browse to your apache directory and run httpd.exe manualy then try your script it should work or if it is not required to be running though a web request so it not using anything from the browser you can allow it to work with c:\wamp\php\php.exe yourfile.php (your php path should be replaced for c:\wamp\php)
Try PHP script?
<?php shell_exec('notepad.exe');?>
It's working.