CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlbashshell
john
john

Reputation: 192

Execute a shell script from HTML

I have written a simple HTML code that upon submit, it executes a bash script. The script is in the correct folder, (cgi-bin). When I load this page on firefox. It gives an error as 

/somePATH/cgi-bin/script.sh could not be opened because an unknown error occurred.

Is the problem about script permissions? I have tried:

chmod 777

Here is a a part of the HTML code.

<form action="cgi-bin/script.sh" method="post">
<input type="submit" value="Call my Shell Script">
</form>

EDIT: The script basically just prints the date: 

#!/bin/bash    
# get today's date
OUTPUT=$(date)
# script
echo "Content-type: text/html"
echo ""
echo "<html><head><title>Demo</title></head><body>"
echo "Today is $OUTPUT <br>"
echo "You can do anything with this Schell Script"
echo "</body></html>"

Upvotes: 1

Views: 22526

Answers (2)

Miguel Ortiz
Miguel Ortiz

Reputation: 1482

Here is a list of things you could check in your httpd.conf regarding CGI:

If you are loading or not the CGI module:

LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so

Verify your aliases for CGI

# ScriptAlias: This controls which directories contain server scripts. 
# ScriptAliases are essentially the same as Aliases, except that
# documents in the target directory are treated as applications and
# run by the server when requested rather than as documents sent to the
# client.  The same rules about trailing "/" apply to ScriptAlias
# directives as to Alias.
#
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/etc/your_httpd_path/cgi-bin/"

The rules of your directory of scripts:

# "/etc/your_httpd_path/cgi-bin/" should be changed to whatever your ScriptAliased
# CGI directory exists, if you have that configured.
#
<Directory "/etc/your_httpd_path/cgi-bin/">
    AllowOverride All
    Options None
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Handlers for different file extensions (add .sh)

# AddHandler allows you to map certain file extensions to "handlers":
# actions unrelated to filetype. These can be either built into the server
# or added with the Action directive (see below)
#
# To use CGI scripts outside of ScriptAliased directories:
# (You will also need to add "ExecCGI" to the "Options" directive.)
#
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl .asp .sh

Check if everything is configured as expected in your environment.

Btw as a good practice: Do not give 777 to the script, give specific permissions for the apache user, find out which user is running the httpd service (it's usually www-data) and do something like:

# remove extra file permissions for others
chmod o-wx /somePATH/cgi-bin/script.sh
# Define the user of the script (same as the user who runs httpd)
chown www-data  /somePATH/cgi-bin/script.sh

Upvotes: 1

Aisiri Shankar
Aisiri Shankar

Reputation: 115

You can use a server side language. This is fairly easy with PHP

<?php
 if(isset($_POST['submit']))
 {
   $output=shell_exec('sh /somePATH/cgi-bin/script.sh');
   echo $output;
 }
?>

<form action="" method="post">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Call my Shell Script">
</form>

Include all your other HTML and save the file with an extension .php

Upvotes: 5

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