Question

I am trying to fax out using sendfax but it wont work, when I echo my exec statement it works fine…what’s my execution issue?

$tmpfname = tempnam("/tmp", $_REQUEST['Email']);

$handle = fopen($tmpfname, "w");
fwrite($handle, $body);
fclose($handle);


exec('sendfax -n -d $to $tmpfname', $test2, $test3);
var_dump($test2);
echo $test3;
?>

and I get the response on the page as:

array(0) { } 255

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

You’re using 'single quote strings' which do not have variable values interpolated. Try replacing:

exec('sendfax -n -d $to $tmpfname', $test2, $test3);

with:

exec("sendfax -n -d $to $tmpfname", $test2, $test3);

Also, you must be certain that neither $to nor $tmpfname contain any shell meta-characters. As it stands, an email address of foo;rm -rf /&@example.com would probably delete some files you care about. (I think using $_REQUEST['Email'] as part of a filename is a bad idea.)

Be sure to read the notes at the PHP exec() documentation page.