Posted by Erwin Moller on 02/03/06 16:43

jonathan.beckett wrote:

> Yep - I've already read the PHP website (it was the first place I
> looked after we found out shell_exec was misbehaving).

Ok, good. :-)

>
> Some background would probably help - the script call worked before the
> server was locked down and put in the DMZ for public access.

Hmm, maybe your call to the program needs some network-access that is now
blocked because of new location (DMZ)?


>
> Following that, the script call didn't work any more. I have stuck a
> test script on the server just calling shell_exec("dir"); and it's
> hanging... on my test box if I remove permissions on cmd.exe, it just
> returns an empty string (i.e. what you would expect).

Aha, so it has nothing to do with DMZ-blocked networkaccess.
If even 'dir' doesn't return...


>
> I'm still waiting for the apache logs - hopefully they will provide
> some more meaningful information...

Did you turn on errorreporting to ALL?
Or doesn't that help because the script just times-out?

Well, I am out of ideas as you can see. :-/

Let us know what you find (with apachelogs maybe), and please: if you fix
it: tell us all how on php.net. :-)

Good luck,
Erwin Moller

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