Hello Monks

I have been looking at this for too long, hopefully someone can spot what is going on!

I have an inhouse system where I need to have users click a link and start a reverse SSH tunnel. The script itself is simple and works. Running it from shell and it connects with no STDOUT. However, when I try to fork it from a web page the page hangs (like it would if I wasn't forking) and stays there forever. The process starts fine, but the page doesn't redirect. 

.....
my $port = $cgi->param("port");

if ( $port ) {
    my $cmd = "ssh -n -F -R $port:localhost:22 -p 80";
    my $pid = fork();
       if ( $pid == 0 ) {
         exec($cmd)
         }
}

print $cgi->redirect("home.pl");

[download]

If I run this from the command line passing in the port the command executes. However, from the webpage, although the command does execute, the page stays there and doesn't redirect.
I have tried adding stdout and stderr redirection on the command but the same problem remains.

Any advise would be great!

In reply to Forking SSH via Apache by packetstormer

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.