illegal command error code 127 in php exec function

Question

I am using this php code:

exec("unrar e file.rar",$ret,$code);

and getting an error code of illegal command ie 127 ... but when I am using this command through ssh its working ... because unrar is installed on the server ... so can anyone guess why exec is not doing the right stuff?

Answer 1

Try using the direct path of the application (/usr/bin/unrar of whatever), it sounds like php can't find the application.

Answer 2

Since this comes up as a top answer in google, I wanted to share my fix:

The simple fix I had was to disable safe_mode in the php.ini file

; Safe Mode
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.sect.safe-mode.php#ini.safe-mode
safe_mode = Off

Answer 3

If you have chrooted apache and php, you will also want to put /bin/sh into the chrooted environment. Otherwise, the exec() or passthru() will not function properly, and will produce error code 127, file not found.

Answer 4

thanx all for your response!!

I tried this

//somedir is inside the directory where php file is
chdir("somedir");
exec("/home/username/bin/unrar e /home/path/to/dir/file.rar");

and now it returned no exit code ... oher commands are doing file .. i tried mkdir etc .. :s

Answer 5

Just in case somebody else still gets this problem, take a look at the post here:

http://gallery.menalto.com/node/2639#comment-8638

Quote:

I found the problem. The problem was my security-paranoid OpenBSD. When upgrading from 3.1 to 3.2 they added:

• Apache runs chroot'd by default. To disable this, see the new -u option.

The chroot prevented Apache from accessing anything outside of a directory, so I moved everything into the apache directory including netpbm. Everything was accessible and executable, but I guess it was still in some sort of "safe mode" because the exec() always returned 127.

Anyway, running httpd with the -u option went back to the less secure non chroot'd apache startup, which allowed the exec() to work again.