Ya, thanks anywho, i guess I’ll just use GD. I was just perplexed as to why I can run other commands via system() but not sips. And also, why running sips via system() on Panther works, but not on Tiger. It annoys me Apple makes changes like that, which might take sysadmins by surprise.

It returns a “6”, but I don’t see anywhere that lists what the heck the error codes mean, so it doesn’t help me much.

Here’s what I’ve got going:

Ok, so here is what I am trying to do. I have this old Perl script which I cannot get rid of because it is part of a large content management system. It has an image uploader which currently uploads just about anything. I want to take advantage of OSX’s “sips” command to resample the image and generate thumbnails. This is just a unix command, so I should be able to use one of the functions in the title above. However it doesn’t work.

I tried calling directly in Perl, but it wasn’t working so then I switched to have perl call a php script so I could try and call sips or go another direction and use PHP’s image functions to do the resizing. So when I was calling directly from Perl, it looked like this ($path and $thumb_path are set based on the account running the script. I have verified that the values are correct):

my $comm = “/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $path –out $thumb_path”;
system($comm) == 0 or die “$? $! / ” . ($? >> 8);

In Perl, there are also system() and bactick operators. So, in the Perl code, right after the image is uploaded, I add a call to a php script :

[code]
`/usr/bin/php /Users/php/acuweb_helpers/create_thumb.php $path $thumb_path`;[/code]

$path is the path to the image
$thumb_path is where I want to write the thumbnail file to

Now, the php script looks like this:

[code][/code]

All the extra stuff there is just me troubleshooting – I write to a text file, the command that I am passing to exec() so I can make sure it comes out right (which it does, everytime).

So, the problem is that the exec() fails. I have checked permissions and they are wide open. I even modifed the command to be like this (to try and force the command to be executed as root user):

[code]`sudo -u root -S /usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $path –out $thumb_path < /etc/root.secret`;[/code] Oh, and since I am printing out to that file (just so I can see the full command being sent to exec()), I can take the string from that file, put it in a php script and it works just fine. In other words, if you look at my code above, the command contains variables that need to be interpolated. However if I just run this script, it works fine: [code] [/code]

So, apparently I am set to run exec w/o trouble. Note that I have also used the backtick operator and passthru on different occasions. Any other thoughts on ways to troubleshoot? For example, does anyone know the significance of the return error codes for exec()? When I run this it always returns a 6.

lastly, I also changed over to use the PHP builtin image functions, but still have issues when perl calls the php script. Here are details.

Ok, maybe you can still help me. If I call my php script directly from the browser, then using the PHP builtin functions works. However, if I call it from the Perl script, then the php script fails at:

$src = imagecreatefromjpeg(“$path”);

So, here is the code. This one works fine when called from the browser directly as so:

http://domain.com/create_thumb.php?path=/Users/aw/www/images/uploads/1.jpg&path2=/Users/aw/www/images/uploads/thumbs/1.jpg

[code]
[/code]

Now, it fails if from my perl script I call the php script like this:

`/usr/bin/php /Users/php/acuweb_helpers/create_thumb.php $path $thumb_path`;

[code][/code]

And note – I also have the php script writing some stuff to a text file so I can troubleshoot. for instance I did implode(‘,’, $argv) and wrote that string to the text file and it shows that the 2 image paths are coming in correctly.

I’ll check the different php configs. Although, yes, if I can get it to work in Perl then that would be great. I tried it like this, but it does not work ($? returns a 6):

[code]my $comm = “/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $path –out $thumb_path”;
system($comm) == 0 or die “$? $! / ” . ($? >> 8);[/code]

I also tried it with backticks:

[code]
`/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $path –out $thumb_path`;
[/code]

Any Perl pros in the house?

Thank you so much for trying to help me with this.

When I ran your script on command line, it works fine:

[code][aw1:/users/php/acuweb_helpers] root# ./sipstest.php ./1.jpg

Running sips as uid=0(root) gid=0(wheel) groups=0(wheel), 1(daemon), 2(kmem), 3(sys), 4(tty), 29(certusers), 8(procview), 5(operator), 9(procmod), 80(admin), 20(staff)

/Users/php/acuweb_helpers/1.jpg
/Users/php/acuweb_helpers/sipsthumb.jpg[/code]

However, that is what I mentioned previously – the problem is when run through a browser. So I converted your script:

[code]



“;

exec(“/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $source –out $thumb”, $output, $retval);
echo “Returns: “.$retval.”\n
“;
var_dump($output);
foreach ( $output as $line )
{
echo “$line\n
“;
}

?>

[/code]

When I run that through the browser (like sipstest.php?image=/Users/php/acuweb_helpers/1.jpg), it outputs:

[code]Running sips as uid=70(www) gid=70(www) groups=70(www), 80(admin)
Returns: 6
array(0) { }[/code]

So the call to sips is failing and returning a 6. Can you test on your server? I am running 10.4.9, and php 4.4.4

hehe.ya, this would not be accessible to the public, and it’s just for proof of concept right now. 🙂

So I output the sips command to screen now too:

[code] echo “/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $source –out $thumb
“;
exec(“/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 $source –out $thumb”, $output, $retval);
[/code]

and it looks fine:

[code]Running sips as uid=70(www) gid=70(www) groups=70(www), 80(admin)
/usr/bin/sips –resampleWidth 60 /Users/php/acuweb_helpers/1.jpg –out /Users/php/acuweb_helpers/sipsthumb.jpg
Returns: 6
array(0) { }[/code]

Hehe, it’s driving me bonkers.