Posted by Erwin Moller on 02/03/06 16:20

jonathan.beckett wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We have PHP 4 installed on Windows 2003 with Apache 2, and the
> shell_exec has mysteriously stopped working - it hangs the page rather
> then returning anything.
>
> To check it out, I tried shell_exec("dir") which works fine on the
> development machine, but not on the live server.
>
> I'm guessing the network guys have done something to the security of
> the live server that would cause this - but it's very strange; why
> would Apache (running under the default system account) not allow PHP
> to run shell_exec statements?
>
> I have checked PHP and it's not in safe mode.
>
> I'm a bit stuck - any ideas would be appreciated...

Hi,

Did you read the usercontributions on php.net?
Maybe they contain a few hints.
They can be found here:

http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/function.shell-exec.php

For example: Somebody complained that the systemcall didn't return. Turned
out to be memorylimit for PHP wasn't enough for the command to complete
succesfully.

Read them, maybe you find something that is usefull.

If that doesn't help: Please provide us with more information, like what you
are calling, etc. etc.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

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