Kernel#system Kernel#` - Is anyone using these in Rails?

Rails
1

Since my previous question didn’t get much attention, I thought I’d make
the
subject more expressive. I didn’t realize the list had this much
traffic.

Is anyone using system or “backquote” to run commands in Rails? These
work
fine in webrick, but both return nil when running in Apache FCGI. In
CGI
mode, system seems to work, but backquote doesn’t. Any ideas? Been
banging
my head on the wall for a while.

BTW, this is on Windows.

Mark

2

BTW, this is on Windows.

well that really explains it to be honest.

yes, im using backquotes in a production app. just wget. since net::http
doesnt seem to have a direct-to-disk download optiion…

i have used popen() extensively on windows in python. although the one
time i tried popen/fork stuff in ruby on windows (in gridflow’s
configure script) it was fairly broken - the interpreter segfaulting
etc.

your main point of failure besides general windows brokenness, and the
hurdles this places on the win32-specific exec/system/popen/backticks
features, is the environment, and permissions. be aware the web server
may be running as ‘nobody’ or someone who cant really do much of
anything, and doesnt have a proper PATH, etc…