Shell from within a CGI works with XP not Vista

[Mike Doty]

Shell from within a CGI program will work with XP, but not Vista.
Anyone know a way to do this with Vista?

The nice thing about it is that I can pop up a message box or
do about anything based upon who hits a page. The work around
with Vista so far has been to monitor a page and then perform the
action. The XP server cgi program just executes my program(s).
Testing with Abyss.

Shell to the program below like this pid = shell("execute.exe msgbox.exe"
This also works on XP, but on Vista the msgbox.exe keeps running in task manager.
I will attempt running something that doesn't need user feedback.

REM cgi program does this
COMPILE EXE
#DIM ALL
FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG
    LOCAL pid AS DWORD
    pid = SHELL(COMMAND$)
END FUNCTION

[Michael Mattias]

>but on Vista the msgbox.exe keeps running in task manager.

Is msgbox.exe a system utility? I don't have one on XP/Pro SP3 all updates.

If it's one of your programs, what does it do?

Regardless, 'msgbox.exe' SHOULD keep running to its completion, as the posted program launches it asynchronously.

MCM

[Mike Doty]

In XP my msgbox.exe program does launch asynchronously when called from a XP cgi program.
With Vista it appears to be part of the same process and the cgi programs stack up in Task Manager (because no GUI window was presented by the msgbox.exe.)

Tried non-gui stuff in a cgi program called by Vista and the cgi programs still stack up in task manager until the asynchronously
shelled to programs end.

Not something that I need to have, but should be noted.
If there is a way to get asynch working with Abyss and Vista would be nice so I get the same behavior as with XP.

The reason I used a MsgBox was to see if the cgi program would continue and allow a GUI to be launched asynch with Vista.
It does not with Vista, but XP does allow asynch shells from cgi's with Abyss to even gui programs.

I'll play with this later tonight. Extremely low priority.

[Mike Doty]

Solution: Don't run as a service.

If you are running Abyss Web Server as a Windows service, what you
describe could make sense.

CGI programs cans spawn other processes and launch programs. But these
programs cannot do everything. Actually, Windows services are executed
using a relatively restricted user account with no access to the desktop
and to some interactive/multimedia devices (such as the sound card or
the keyboard). This is the case since Windows 2000 and this behavior was
enforced since 2003 in all Windows operating systems. So when Abyss Web
Server running as a service launches a CGI application, the former will
run with the services user privileges and any program the CGI launches
inherits the same restrictions.

If you have a way to get the return code from the Playsound or the Beep
operation, you would find out that the system prohibited the operation
or that the current user has no access to the sound device.

But if you run Abyss Web Server in a user session, beeps and sound
generation remains possible.

If you need to monitor the execution of a CGI application, the best is
to write into files or report Windows Events (the following article may
help you <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154576>).

Thank you for using and supporting Abyss Web Server and please feel free
to contact us if you have any question or feedback.

Best regards,

Support Team
Aprelium - http://www.aprelium.com