Run executable from php without spawning a shell

Question

I need to call an executable from an imposed context of a PHP script. Both performance and security wise it\'s better not to call a shell at all between web server process a

Answer 1

To answer your sentence :

Both performance and security wise it's better not to call a shell at all between web server process and executable.

About performances, well, yes, php internals forks, and the shell itself forks too so that's a bit heavy. But you really need to execute a lot of processes to consider those performances issues.

About security, I do not see any issue here. PHP has the escapeshellarg function to sanitize arguments.

The only real problem I met with exec without pcntl is not a resource nor security issue : it is really difficult to create real deamons (without any attachment to its parent, particularily Apache). I solved this by using at, after double-escaping my command:

$arg1 = escapeshellarg($arg1);
$arg2 = escapeshellarg($arg2);
$command = escapeshellarg("/some/bin $arg1 $arg2 > /dev/null 2>&1 &");
exec("$command | at now -M");

To get back to your question, the only way I know to execute programs in a standard (fork+exec) way is to use the PCNTL extension (as already mentionned). Anyway, good luck!

---

To complete my answer, you can create an exec function yourself that does the same thing as pcntl_fork+pcntl_exec.

I made a my_exec extension that does a classic exec+fork, but actually, I do not think it will solve your issues if you're running this function under apache, because the same behaviour as pcntl_fork will apply (apache2 will be forked and there may be unexpected behaviours with signal catching and so on when execv does not succeed).

config.m4 the phpize configuration file

PHP_ARG_ENABLE(my_exec_extension, whether to enable my extension,
[ --enable-my-extension   Enable my extension])

if test "$PHP_MY_EXEC_EXTENSION" = "yes"; then
  AC_DEFINE(HAVE_MY_EXEC_EXTENSION, 1, [Whether you have my extension])
  PHP_NEW_EXTENSION(my_exec_extension, my_exec_extension.c, $ext_shared)
fi

my_exec_extension.c the extension

#ifdef HAVE_CONFIG_H
#include "config.h"
#endif
#include "php.h"

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>

#define PHP_MY_EXEC_EXTENSION_VERSION "1.0"
#define PHP_MY_EXEC_EXTENSION_EXTNAME "my_exec_extension"

extern zend_module_entry my_exec_extension_module_entry;
#define phpext_my_exec_extension_ptr &my_exec_extension_module_entry

// declaration of a custom my_exec()
PHP_FUNCTION(my_exec);

// list of custom PHP functions provided by this extension
// set {NULL, NULL, NULL} as the last record to mark the end of list
static function_entry my_functions[] = {
    PHP_FE(my_exec, NULL)
    {NULL, NULL, NULL}
};

// the following code creates an entry for the module and registers it with Zend.
zend_module_entry my_exec_extension_module_entry = {
#if ZEND_MODULE_API_NO >= 20010901
    STANDARD_MODULE_HEADER,
#endif
    PHP_MY_EXEC_EXTENSION_EXTNAME,
    my_functions,
    NULL, // name of the MINIT function or NULL if not applicable
    NULL, // name of the MSHUTDOWN function or NULL if not applicable
    NULL, // name of the RINIT function or NULL if not applicable
    NULL, // name of the RSHUTDOWN function or NULL if not applicable
    NULL, // name of the MINFO function or NULL if not applicable
#if ZEND_MODULE_API_NO >= 20010901
    PHP_MY_EXEC_EXTENSION_VERSION,
#endif
    STANDARD_MODULE_PROPERTIES
};

ZEND_GET_MODULE(my_exec_extension)

char *concat(char *old, char *buf, int buf_len)
{
    int str_size = strlen(old) + buf_len;
    char *str = malloc((str_size + 1) * sizeof(char));
    snprintf(str, str_size, "%s%s", old, buf);
    str[str_size] = '\0';
    free(old);
    return str;
}

char *exec_and_return(char *command, char **argv)
{
    int link[2], readlen;
    pid_t pid;
    char buffer[4096];
    char *output;

    output = strdup("");

    if (pipe(link) < 0)
    {
        return strdup("Could not pipe!");
    }

    if ((pid = fork()) < 0)
    {
        return strdup("Could not fork!");
    }

    if (pid == 0)
    {
        dup2(link[1], STDOUT_FILENO);
        close(link[0]);
        if (execv(command, argv) < 0)
        {
            printf("Command not found or access denied: %s\n", command);
            exit(1);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        close(link[1]);

        while ((readlen = read(link[0], buffer, sizeof(buffer))) > 0)
        {
            output = concat(output, buffer, readlen);
        }

        wait(NULL);
    }
    return output;
}

PHP_FUNCTION(my_exec)
{
    char *command;
    int command_len, argc, i;
    zval *arguments, **data;
    HashTable *arr_hash;
    HashPosition pointer;
    char **argv;

    // recovers a string (s) and an array (a) from arguments
    if (zend_parse_parameters(ZEND_NUM_ARGS() TSRMLS_CC, "sa", &command, &command_len, &arguments) == FAILURE) {
        RETURN_NULL();
    }

    arr_hash = Z_ARRVAL_P(arguments);

    // creating argc and argv from our argument array
    argc = zend_hash_num_elements(arr_hash);
    argv = malloc((argc + 1) * sizeof(char *));
    argv[argc] = NULL;

    for (
            i = 0, zend_hash_internal_pointer_reset_ex(arr_hash, &pointer);
            zend_hash_get_current_data_ex(arr_hash, (void**) &data, &pointer) == SUCCESS;
            zend_hash_move_forward_ex(arr_hash, &pointer)
        )
    {
        if (Z_TYPE_PP(data) == IS_STRING) {
            argv[i] = malloc((Z_STRLEN_PP(data) + 1) * sizeof(char));
            argv[i][Z_STRLEN_PP(data)] = '\0';
            strncpy(argv[i], Z_STRVAL_PP(data), Z_STRLEN_PP(data));
            i++;
        }
    }

    char *output = exec_and_return(command, argv);

    // freeing allocated memory
    for (i = 0; (i < argc); i++)
    {
        free(argv[i]);
    }
    free(argv);

    // WARNING! I guess there is a memory leak here.
    // Second arguemnt to 1 means to PHP: do not free memory
    // But if I put 0, I get a segmentation fault
    // So I think I do not malloc correctly for a PHP extension.
    RETURN_STRING(output, 1);
}

test.php a usage sample

<?php

dl("my_exec.so");

$output = my_exec("/bin/ls", array("-l", "/"));
var_dump($output);

shell script run those commands, of course use your own module directory

phpize
./configure
make
sudo cp modules/my_exec_extension.so /opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/my_exec.so

Result

KolyMac:my_fork ninsuo$ php test.php
string(329) ".DS_Store
.Spotlight-V100
.Trashes
.file
.fseventsd
.hidden
.hotfiles.btree
.vol
AppleScript
Applications
Developer
Installer Log File
Library
Microsoft Excel Documents
Microsoft Word Documents
Network
System
Users
Volumes
bin
cores
dev
etc
home
lost+found
mach_kernel
net
opt
private
sbin
tmp
usr
var
vc_command.txt
vidotask.txt"

I am not a C dev, so I think there are cleaner ways to achieve this. But you get the idea.

Answer 2

Id consider trying pcntl_exec()