Question

I want to build a php based site that (automate) some commands on my Ubuntu Server

first thing I did was going to the file (sudoers) and add the user www-data so I can execute php commands with root privileges!

# running the web apps with root power!!!
www-data    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

then my PHP code was

<?php
   $command = "cat /etc/passwd | cut -d\":\" -f1";
   echo 'running the command: <b>'.$command."</b><br />";
   echo exec($command);
?>

it returns only one user (the last user) !!! how to make it return all users?

thank you

Answer 1

From the PHP manual on exec:

Return Values

The last line from the result of the
command. If you need to execute a
command and have all the data from the
command passed directly back without
any interference, use the passthru()
function.
To get the output of the executed command, be sure to set and use the
output parameter.

So you have to do something similar to this:

<?php
   $output = array();
   $command = "cat /etc/passwd | cut -d\":\" -f1";
   echo 'running the command: <b>'.$command."</b><br />";
   exec($command, &$output);
   echo implode("<br />\n", $output);
?>