shell_exec not working with nmap command

Question

I got a problem with the shell_exec php function, here is a example code:

$output = shell_exec(\'nmap -PS80 -n -oG - --send-ip 11.11.11.11\         


        

Answer 1

You might want to resort to exec() instead, which gives you greater error diagnostics:

// Capture outout from STDERR as well
$command = "nmap ... 2>&1";

exec($command, $output, $return_var);

// If return code is not zero, the command failed
if ($return_var != 0) 
{
    // dump all output, including error messages
    var_dump($output);
}

Answer 2

Try to specify full path to nmap like /usr/local/bin/nmap. PHP might not know about nmap location. Enjoy!