Perl Exec

user2000 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Monks, Here is my problem today. I am running a perl file in an apache server in a browser. Now when I call this file remotely (e.g. 122.34.5.3/cgi-bin/index.pl) it should play a file on my linux server. i have put the following code in the perl file: exec(mplayer /test.mp3); but it seems to print some text on the screen instead. i want it to play the file on the server. please help. thankyou.

Comment on Perl Exec

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Re: Perl Exec by Perlbotics (Archbishop) on Oct 19, 2008 at 17:58 UTC
You might want ... to tell what the program displayed. Your webservers log file should hold further information. use system instead of exec, since exec terminates the current process (might work, but the HTTP response might be incomplete; simple webservers might terminate). use an absolute path for mplayer and options to terminate the player when done. check permissions: does your webserver has access to the audio device and to the mp3-file? `/test.mp3` is located at your computers filesystems root-dir, not your webservers root-dir (where `/cgi-bin/...` starts). You might use an absolute (filesystem) path too. consider security issues (e.g. restrict access to 127.0.0.1., check user input). ...	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re: Perl Exec
by Perlbotics (Archbishop) on Oct 19, 2008 at 17:58 UTC

You might want ...

to tell what the program displayed. Your webservers log file should hold further information.
use system instead of exec, since exec terminates the current process (might work, but the HTTP response might be incomplete; simple webservers might terminate).
use an absolute path for mplayer and options to terminate the player when done.
check permissions: does your webserver has access to the audio device and to the mp3-file?
/test.mp3 is located at your computers filesystems root-dir, not your webservers root-dir (where /cgi-bin/... starts). You might use an absolute (filesystem) path too.
consider security issues (e.g. restrict access to 127.0.0.1., check user input).
...

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]