git pull via PHP exec IIS

Question

Easily the most difficult problem to diagnose that I have EVER experienced. I seem to be unable to call:

exec('call git pull', $output);

The process hangs and tends to take IIS with it.

exec('call git status', $output); //works fine

Here's what I've done:

• Generated RSA key added to github (passcode is blank)
• Everyone has permission on mysite/.git/, and Program Files/git/bin and cmd.exe
• Tried the ssl cert fix mentioned in other posts with 'slash' issue
• Tried using https:// instead of SSH
• Tried piping to stderr 2>NUL and 2>&1

Clearly, there's a permissions issue where exec calls cmd.exe which in turn calls git.exe, which in turn calls sh.exeto connect to github, which in turn makes use of git-pull and possibly git-send-packand GOD KNOWS what else.

I'm guessing 'sh.exe' determines the current user is IUSR and cannot find the RSA key to authenticate with.

If I could figure out how to ssh-keygen the IUSR account, I would have tried that.

If I could figure out how to exec git bash instead of git (via cmd.exe) I would have tried that.

Here's the question in it's simplest form:

How do I pull from my github repo via PHP's exec method?

The problem certainly seems to be with SSH, but I'm totally at the end of everything to try.

Help!

Answer 1

I faced the same problem today and used Process Monitor to see what was going on and found that for some reasons sh.exe looked for the keys in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\.ssh. So I copied everything in C:\Users\Administrator\.ssh to that folder and it worked perfectly.

Answer 2

I am running Windows Server 2012 and wasn't able to get Iamz's solution to work.

I searched for ".ssh" in my C:\ and noticed that there was another .ssh folder at C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\.ssh. I copied all the contents from C:\Users\Administrator\.ssh to this folder, set permissions to allow IUSR access, and everything was kosher.

Answer 3

there are a number of php git libraries/tools. https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Interfaces,_frontends,_and_tools#git-php

personally i have been hacking with GLIP (git library in php) http://fimml.at/#glip

i have a source fork on github where i have added an archive function. basically i dynamically create a git command and use php's passthru method to call it. perhaps looking at my code might give you some insight. here's the commit https://github.com/fontvirus/glip/commit/89127f7f9a4dc61697929f36684533406f348ffe

Answer 4

Move your .ssh folder to userprofile dir. You can see you app profile dir in this global variable $_SERVER['USERPROFILE']. In my case it's C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile. Then give permissions to read/write to this folder (.ssh) for users: IIS_IUSRS, IUSR