Question

I’m trying to execute a command through system() in PHP. The command is /usr/bin/unzip, but the function returns with the error code 127. There is nothing else outputted. If I run the very same command directly in a shell it works.

The apache error log says ‘sh: /unzip: not found’. I have also tried to put the command into a shell script that is in the same directory as the PHP script and call the shell script through system(). The same happens: if the shell script was called ‘doit.sh’ the error message in the apache log would be ‘sh: /doit.sh: not found’.

exec() has the same behaviour.

The PHP version is 5.2.11-2 with suhosin extensions.

Any ideas what PHP could be doing to my command?

Answer 1

Turn off safe mode in php.ini.

If safe mode is on and the safe_mode_exec_dir property is empty you’ll get exactly the same behaviour as described.