Comments on: File change notifications for your WordPress blog on Linux

By: Eugene

Eugene — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:39:53 +0000

Hello,

I get the following error messages when the cron runs:

"Cannot bind/listen socket – [2] No such file or directory.
Couldn't create FastCGI listen socket on port lic_html/test.php"

Test.php is the name of the file which runs this script. I have contacted HostGator's technical support and they told me that "You cannot create sockets on our servers through php. You would need to find a script which does not use sockets and then try again."

Am I doing something wrong or are they correct about the script trying to create sockets. If they are correct, could you please post a workaround for this? When it comes to Unix, I am completely cluess, sorry.

Thanks for your help.

Reply from Peter: Sorry, I’m stumped there. If anybody has an explanation or solution, please post it as a comment.

By: John

John — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:50:08 +0000

Hi Peter. Excellent article. So just to make sure I got this straight.

What I do is:

1. Edit the first part of the line
exec('find /path/to/your/folder -cmin -62 -print', $last_changed);

to find / if my WP install is in my root

2. Enter in my email

3. Save this file as a file name with a php extension and upload it to my server.

4. Set up a cron job to run this script every hour

Is that basically what I need to do?
Thanks

Reply from Peter: correct, although in the first step, I would put “find . -cmin…” if you are placing the script in the root of your WordPress directory; that or put the absolute path to the WordPress directory. After that, I would test it by running the script directly by printing $email_output to the screen.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:08:19 +0000

Hi Vadim, please see this comment and the couple of comments following that. In short, your options are limited. I invite people to share alternative solutions if they have any!

By: Vadim

Vadim — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:42:58 +0000

My hosting doesn't allow to the exec() command to be executed, what can I do to make it work?
Thanks,
Vadim

By: jidanni

jidanni — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:42:01 +0000

One line is all it takes:
$ cat .crontab
11 * * * * find wordpress -type f $ -mmin -62 -o -cmin -62 $
$ crontab .crontab
If there is no matches, no mail will be sent.

By: crystal

crystal — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:43:39 +0000

Yes I am on a shared server. Thanks for the reply and the tips. I did talk to them a day or so ago but will be calling them back soon.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:54:58 +0000

Hi crystal, are you on a shared server? It seems as though the "find" command is not allowed to be run as an executable for the user account that is running the script. I don't know the specific steps to take without further research, so you should contact your web host or whoever is managing the server, or paste that error into Google.

By: crystal

crystal — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:06:23 +0000

uhh lets try that again.

Thanks with an s.. and I changed all the necessary lines IN the php file.
The cron job is running perfectly, but I get this in the log/results email ( the one from the server) sh: /usr/bin/find: Permission denied

Sorry for the typo's.. it's late.

By: crystal

crystal — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:03:26 +0000

Thank, but I can't get it to work. I changed all the necessary files. I have the Cron Job set up and the job is running fine, but it supplies an email with this sh: /usr/bin/find: Permission denied

Do you know what's happening?? Thanks in advance, I can't WAIT to get it working.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:16:43 +0000

I would say that it is a security risk, but it can certainly be mitigated. If someone exploits a vulnerability in one of your scripts (or someone else's if you're on a shared hosting environment) and can run the exec command, they can probably do more. However, that all depends on the privileges that the PHP user is given. I'm no expert on this though.