PHP to Powershell using shell_exec

Question

If I run:

$output = shell_exec('powershell "get-service "dhcp""');

I get perfect output of the service dhcp showing running but if I run:

$output = shell_exec('powershell "get-user "testing""');

I get nothing.

I don't see any difference in what Im doing here - and why get-service would work but get-user would not. If I run it in cmd it works perfectly. Any ideas?

I believe the issues might be that apache is running the command and does not have permissions. Could this be the case? Does apache run as a different user? If so it doesn't have access to do this.

@Franz - is this the post you were referring to? stackoverflow.com/questions/2353551/php-powershell-command — dugas
– dugas, Commented Mar 2, 2010 at 1:22
Get-User is not a built-in command. Can you say a little about this cmdlet like which module or snapin it comes from? Or is it a command that you wrote? BTW, I would run this from cmd.exe like so powershell -command "& {get-user testing}". Note that is normally unnecessary to quote string arguments in PowerShell. — Keith Hill
– Keith Hill, Commented Mar 2, 2010 at 1:23
The question before was about the quotes issue I had when using shell_exec. This one is a permissions issue I believe but want to clarify. Thanks. — Michael Burns
– Michael Burns, Commented Mar 2, 2010 at 1:35

dugas · Accepted Answer · 2010-03-02 02:04:32Z

3

Try redirecting the error output to the standard output to see if you can see an error.

$output = shell_exec('powershell "get-user "testing" 2>&1"');

This snippet taken from http://www.aboutdebian.com/nettools.txt

//Normally, the shell_exec function does not report STDERR messages. 
//The   "2>&1"          option tells the system 
//to pipe STDERR to STDOUT so if there is an error, we can see it.
$fp = shell_exec("$command 2>&1");

edited Mar 2, 2010 at 2:04

answered Mar 2, 2010 at 1:21

dugas

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MerlinTheMagic · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-01 11:57:02Z

exec() and shell_exec() are not very verbose by nature. exec() allows you to set a third variable and get the execution status, but failures are mostly assigned "1" and you have no way of knowing if it was a permissions error, if the binary is not executable etc.

Enter a project that allows PHP to obtain and interact dynamically with a real Powershell. Get it here: https://github.com/merlinthemagic/MTS

After downloading you would simply use the following code:

$shellObj    = \MTS\Factories::getDevices()->getLocalHost()->getShell('powershell');

$strCmd1   = 'get-user "testing"';
$return1  = $shellObj->exeCmd($strCmd1);

The return will give you the command return OR error from powershell, just as if you sat at the console. Furthermore, you can issue any command you like against the $shellObj, the environment is maintained throughout the life of the PHP script. So instead of bundling commands in a script file, just issue them one by one using the exeCmd() method, that way you can also handle the return and any exceptions.

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