Kind of odd...

I have a php page that lives in a directory with a tcsh script. In the tcsh script, I use lynx to fetch some info from the web, parse it & echo it out. The php takes the echoed out stuff, formats it, and displays it.

This all worked fine and dandy until i restarted apache after changing ports (and, subsequently, changing them back). Now, the return value from the tcsh script does not contain the lynx dump but does contain other text if I add it.

This does work if I run the php page from the command line rather than through a browser, so I'm guessing it's some sort of permissions issue, but both lynx and the tcsh script are read + executable by all.

Does your php.ini file have safe_mode on?

BTW: if you enable:
in php.ini, you can open any remote URL like any regular file and use native php functions to get your data. This way you can do away with the shell script, and exec call altogether.

No, safe mode is off. I'll look into the allow url bit.

Thanks.

from php.ini:

allow_url = on
safe_mode_exe_dir =

but this still doesn't work when run through a browser. I'm completely stumped.. I've tried:

making the shell script echo output that php catches through exec.
making the shell script write to a file, then read the file through php.
using fopen on a URL i.e. fopen("http://some.url.com",'r');

Basically, If run through a browser and the shell script runs lynx, it doesn't work, if the shell script doesn't run lynx, but rather, runs "ls" or something of the sort, it does work. If I run the php from the command line rather than a browser, it works fine. There doesn't seem to be permissions problems and this was working before I restarted apache. Note: when I say "it doesn't work", I mean all the output that should come from lynx is missing, but if I add formatting output like "text should go here: ", that will print, but the text that comes from lynx doesn't.



update: if I check out the error log on the machine running appache, I get a "/root/: No such directory"
my script isn't accessing anything in /root and apache is run under the user "apache" - could this be a path issue?... hmm... if I echo out the path variable from the php through the brwoser, /root is not involved.

I can't explain why it worked before and does not now, but upgrading lynx solved the problem.

I managed to find a few threads on other boards regarding this very problem - none with answers so if you come across this issue, upgrading lynx seems to fix it.