Shell_exec won't work with crontab

[tibberous]

When I type the line, crontab -u nobody /home/express/public_html/control/crontabs/process.cron, into putty, it works.

 

Same line, shell_exec("crontab -u nobody /home/express/public_html/control/crontabs/process.cron");

 

Doesn't work.

 

/etc/crontab and /usr/bin/crontab are both set to 777.

 

I tried changing crontab to /usr/bin/crontab

 

I just don't know what else to do, shell_exec doesn't seem to work anything like real shell commands. I get NO output, it just doesn't work.

 

 

[Northern Flame]

do you get any errors?

[tibberous]

No.

 

I think my problem might because PHP is running it as nobody, and I'm running it as root, but there is no reason why it should matter because I changed the permissions on everything.

 

...

 

If I set UID, it doesn't let me run the script at all.

 

Is there a way to set PHP to run everything as root?

[tibberous]

I created a new user, and ran the line:

 

su shell -c "/usr/bin/crontab -e"

 

And I get:

 

cron/shell: Permission denied

 

Even though the file is set to 777.

 

If I wanted an unusable level of security, I would have used Vista.

[jonsjava]

does your apache user have access to crontab?

each user (including apache2 or www-root) gets their own user rights.

[discomatt]

If the file is set to 777, every user should get permission.

[jonsjava]

not the file. Does your apache user have access to use crontab?

[tibberous]

How can I tell?

 

I don't think anyone except root can use the -u, and -e opens it up in vim.

 

I can change the file, but the changes don't update unless I use crontab -u.

[jonsjava]

do this:

figure out which username your web service runs under:

cat /etc/passwd

Next, as root:

su <username>

then attempt to run the code as them

If it fails, then the apache user can't run it.