I recently got my laptop with Apache setup on my university's Ethernet connection. Now I can connect to my computer from anywhere as long as I have either the IP address or host name (which I can choose). Now I want to create a Web-based command prompt that will let me run commands on my laptop from any device.
One problem is that I can't run the "cd" command. I have my PHP script setup so it can run a series of commands delimited by a newline character. So I run "cd ../" and then "pwd" but it's still in the root directory of my Web app. How do I fix this?
If you do this:
shell_exec("cd ..");
shell_exec("pwd");
Then the second command will be executed with a new shell, which has the same starting directory as the first had, because it's a subprocess of the current PHP.
The changing of the current directory with the first shell exec won't last to the second one. Such a series of depended shell commands only works by executing all at once:
shell_exec("cd .. ; pwd");
I think you have to change the directory of the current process/script. You do this with chdir. Then you can run shell_exec.
I assume you realize the severe security concerns your solution creates...
Related
i have an application called app.exe it's create a file called account.txt in the same folder c:\ , the problem is that when i run the program from php exec function or cmd the account.txt file is not creating
i think the problem is from the permissions.
Run From: What happened
Manualy Executed and created the file account.txt
PHP exec Executed but it did't create account.txt
CMD Executed but it did't create account.txt
for php i use:
exec("C:\\windows\\system32\\cmd.exe /c START c:\app.exe");
for cmd i use:
START C:\app.exe
A program that requires elevation should specify so in its manifest. This would not help with the PHP issue though, especially if this is a web server using PHP. It is not possible to elevate without showing the UAC UI.
I'm not aware of a simple way to request elevation when executing something in Cmd. You might just have to start Cmd elevated (Right-click and "Run as Administrator").
PHP might be running as a different user but you gave us zero information about your setup so I don't know.
Without knowing anything about app.exe nor your Windows version or general configuration it is hard to give specific advise.
If you want to confirm that it as a permissions problem you can try running Process Monitor so you can see why the file operation fails.
You should be able to use the runas command
runas /profile /user:*admin user here* “*path to program here*”
you will then be prompted for that users password and after that it should run as admin.
So I am using PHP exec() to run a batch file on my server:
echo exec("printCountries.bat");
The batch file opens Microsoft Access 2007 and runs a macro to print a form and then close Access:
START /MIN /B msaccess.exe "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\system\reports.accdb" /X printCountries
I can run the batch file from the command line successfully and the form prints to our network printer (this is for a company intranet) and closes Access. But when I run the PHP script, the batch file only runs the Access Process but does not perform the command line switches or open the database file.
I have configured PHP to have the right privileges on IIS, I am just stumped as to why the command line switches don't work and the batch file won't open the database.
Any ideas?
here is the echo output:
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\scale>START /MIN /B msaccess.exe "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\system\reports.accdb" /X printCountries
It looks like you have some access rights problem.
Did you try to run in PHP this echo exec("whoami");
What username you get?
Something like "nt authority\iusr" ?
You have to give to the default IIS user (i.e. IIS_IUSRS) full access to the path that your scripts lives.
In addition you can change (only TEMPORARILY huh?) the default application pool user from ApplicationPoolIdentity to LocalService or LocalSystem to test the results...
If I were you, I would created a new Application in IIS then I would created a new Application Pool and I would assigned it to this app. Then I created a new user that will have access to all the appropriate directories (web dir and where the bat is located).
If nothing of the above worked I would test my php application from my command line (locally) using the php command in my local command prompt.
I am neither good with PHP, nor with Access. However, when you invoke the batch file from PHP, please create an instance of cmd.exe and pass "/c printCountries.bat" to cmd.exe. In other words, the command run by PHP exec should look something like this (assuming PATH is set correctly):
cmd.exe /c printCountries.bat
Also, inside printContries.bat, I think you will need to wait until the access process terminates. So it should look like
START /WAIT /MIN /B msaccess.exe "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\system\reports.accdb" /X printCountries
i am using arch linux. i want to execute the php file which changes the ip of the system. i did
ifconfig eth0 192.168.163.137
in the terminal and it works fine. the same i tried doing with
shell_exec('ifconfig eth0 192.168.163.137');
in a php file and tried opening the page from a remotely located web browser from another pc connected via router. teh page displays nothing and the code also doesnt execute. i guess its the problem with the user executing it.apache is executing it. so i want it to be run by the root.can anyone please guide me to the execution of my code. i even installed sudo and just put
shell_exec('sudo ifconfig......');
it too doesnt execute...please help...thanku..:)
Sudo normally requires an interactive shell to enter your password. That's obviously not going to happen in a PHP script. If you're sure you know what you're doing and you've got your security issues covered, try allowing the Apache user to run sudo without a password, but only for certain commands.
For example, adding the following line in your sudoers file will allow Apache to run sudo without a password, only for the ifconfig command.
apache ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/ifconfig
Adjust the path and add any arguments to suit your needs.
Caution:
There might still be complications due to the way PHP calls shell commands.
Remember that it's very risky to allow the web server to run commands as root!
Probably a better alternative:
Write a shell script with the suid bit to make it run as root no matter who calls it.
shell_exec
This function is disabled when PHP is running in safe mode.
Documentation : http://php.net/manual/en/function.shell-exec.php
So, maybe try tweaking your php.ini file?
Write the commands to a queue and have cron pick them up, validate them (only allow known good requests), and run them, then mark that queue complete with the date and result.
Your end-user can then click/wait for update using ajax.
I can run an svn command from the command line but not from within a PHP script. Significantly, I can run the PHP script on my Mac and it returns the expected data just fine but when I upload it to my Linux server it won't work (from within PHP... I can run the svn command from the terminal). I'm pretty sure this is a user or permission issue of some sort.
I can run (from command line):
svn log http://whatever.com/svn/foo
but none of the following work (run separately... not all together like this):
exec('svn log http://whatever.com/svn/foo');
exec('svn log http://whatever.com/svn/foo',$out);
exec('/usr/bin/svn log http://whatever.com/svn/foo');
However this works:
exec('ls');
I assume the problem is that when I run from the command line I am running as root whereas when I run from PHP I am running as the apache user (www-data)? Perhaps? Any suggestions on how to be able to run exec('svn log http://whatever.com/svn/foo');?
Changing permissions to 777 (just trying to get it working!) does not help.
Here are a couple of threads that I think might help:
Thread 1 (read as there is more):
$cmd = '/usr/bin/svn list --config-dir /some/place file:///var/subversion/devfoundry/ 2>&1';
exec($cmd, $output);
$output = implode("\n", $output) . "\n";
echo $output;
Thread 2:
The Subversion error "svn: Can't
recode string" can be caused by the
locale being wrong. Try
<?php
putenv('LANG=en_US.UTF-8');
?>
(or whatever your preferred locale is)
before you call shell_exec()
Thread 3: PHP Interactive Shell
May be you can use a svn client for php. Here is a good one
http://code.google.com/p/phpsvnclient/
When you run Subversion from the command line, you are running it as yourself. That is, you are the user logged in and running the command.
If you are running Php from a webpage, it is the user who is running the Apache httpd daemon (which could be "apache", "www", "runwww", etc. depending upon the platform). The user running the PHP script may not have read/write permissions to the Subversion repository.
You have two ways of solving this:
Provide your program with user credentials via the --username and --password command line parameters.
Setup the user running httpd with Subversion credentials. Once it is done, it'll never have to be done again. This way, your PHP code doesn't contain login credentials.
Here's my goal :
I have a Windows XP PC with all the source code in it and a development database.
Let's call it "pc.dev.XP".
I have a destination computer that runs Linux.
Let's call it "pc.demo.Linux".
Here's what I've done on "pc.dev.XP" (just so you get the context) :
installed all cygwin stuff
created a valid rsa key and put it on the dest
backup computer so that ssh doesn't
ask for a password
rsync works pretty well this way
If i try to do this on "pc.dev.XP" via a command line :
cd \cygwin\bin
ssh Fred#pc.demo.Linux "cd /var/www && ls -al"
this works perfectly without asking a password
Now here's what I want to do on the "pc.dev.XP":
launch a php script that extract the dev. database into a sql file
zip this file
transfer it via ftp to the "pc.demo.Linux"
log to the "pc.demo.Linux" and execute "unzip then mysql -e "source unzipped file"
if I run on "pc.dev.XP" manually :
putty -load "myconf" -l Fred -pw XXX -m script.file.that.unzip.and.integrates.sql
this works perfectly.
Same for :
cd \cygwin\bin
ssh Fred#dest "cd /var/www && ls -al"
If I try to exec() in php (wamp installed on "pc.dev.XP") those scripts they hangs. I'm pretty sure this is because the user is "SYSTEM" and not "Fred", and putty or ssh ask for a password but maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway I'm looking for a way to automate those 4 tasks I've described and I'm stuck because exec() hangs. There's no problem with safe_exec_mode or safe_exec_dir directives, they're disabled on the development machine, thus exec() works pretty well if I try some basic stuff like exec("dir")
Any idea what I could do / check / correct ?
I'm not sure if this is what you need, but I typically use a construct like this to sync databases across machines:
php extractFromDb.php | ssh user#remote.com "mysql remoteDatabaseName"
This executes the PHP script locally, and pipes the SQL commands the script prints out through SSH straigt into the remote mysql process which executes them in the remote database.
If you need compression, you can either use SSH's -C switch, or integrate the use of your compression program of choice like this:
php extractFromDb.php | gzip -9 | ssh user#remote.com "gunzip | mysql remoteDatabaseName"
You want to do this from PHP running under apache, as in I go to http://myWebserver.com/crazyScript.php and all this happens? Or you just want to write your scripts in PHP and invoke them via cmd line?
If you want the first solution, try running your apache/iss under a different user that has credentials to perform all those tasks.
"if I run on the development PC manually this works perfectly.".
Why not do it like that? When you run that script, I assume you're connecting to the local SSH server on the dev machine. When you do this, you are using the credentials Fred, so everything works. When you run the PHP script, you are right that it is probably running as SYSTEM.
Try either changing the user that apache is running as or use php to connect to the local ssh thereby using alternate credentials.
Here's what I did :
a batch file that :
Calls a php file via "php.exe my_extract_then_compress_then_ftp.php"
Calls rsync to synchronize the source folder
Calls putty -l user -pw password -m file_with_ssh_commands_to_execute
It works like a charm.