OT: How to embed or call a shell script in an html file?

[Matt Graham]

From: joe
> I have tried everything that you suggested, but I still can't get
> the code that you gave me to work.

>> If your web server is running PHP ... 
> It is. I have other .php programs on my web host's server that
> work fine.

So it's a shared host, possibly with a config that's disabled some things or
enabled other things.  If "safe mode" is enabled, you can't use ``.  I asked
for the output of phpinfo() earlier; that'd be a great place to start.

>> all you should need to do is copy all the stuff
>> Then, going to http://yoursite.example.com/search.php
>> should show you a simple form with 2 fields and a "Go" button. 
> I have done that, but I get this error message:
> "[an error occurred while processing this directive]"
> No other details or info.

That error usually means a bad SSI directive, not anything to do with PHP. 
Did you look at the error logs?  Are any error logs available?

> Yet I do have other .php programs running and working fine

So it's something with that code.  Does "php -l thatfile.php" return any
errors?  That very useful command runs a syntax check on PHP code.  I use that
all the time to make sure I haven't left a ; or ) off.

>> Apache with PHP enabled typically has 2 lines in its config file
>>   LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
> I don't know where to find that libphp.so

It shouldn't be necessary to change that if other PHP code is working.

I would guess that your webhost has safe mode on, but I don't know for sure. 
You won't be able to execute shell from PHP if that's the case.  It'd be
possible to replicate what you want without using shell by using preg_match(),
naturally.  This would require learning more PHP and using that instead of
shell though....

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
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