Linux Rights issue

Question

Firstly, I am running all of these commands through www-data user..which is apache2 user... Using php, and exec function to run these commands...

I create the directory

mkdir -p testing

Now lets see folders

ls

the directory testing is not showing...although the folder was created ( I check in physical path)

Answer 1

Firstly, make sure that the directory you are writing into a) exists and b) has the right permissions to allow you to read/write to it.

Secondly, try not to use exec, system, or anything like that. Not only is it unsafe (passing args can be a real security hole), but it also adds a large overhead to the operation, having to spawn new sub-processes etc.

• PHP has a mkdir() function built in
• ls can be replaced by a call to scandir()

Also, using exec() just returns the last line of the command you run. If you really need to use a system program to perform functions then you should either use passthru() to return the data direct to the browser, or shell_exec() if you want to have the output in a string.