Hey gang,

Hoping someone can help me out!

Back in March I installed the aMember script on one of my domains. I had a tough time setting up the CRON job as most of the code lines provided to me by aMember didn't work. Finally I got the right line wich was:
curl -s http://your-TCH-domain.com/amember/cron.php

The other day I started to get messages from the server saying:
/bin/sh: line 1: /usr/bin/curl: Permission denied

I put in a trouble ticket and was told that CURL was disabled on the shared servers for security. The tech assistant kindly reconfigured the cron job to work with php.

This morning I got another email from the server stating:
Cannot create license: unknown TLD for domain: i

I will be honest, I haven't the slightest idea how to make this work.

I emailed Alex over at CGI Central (the author of the scripts) and he told me that it was my host that blocked access to curl and that I should forward the error message that I got to host support and ask to fix that error.

Now of course it turns out Curl is disabled now, so I have no idea how to fix this problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks so much

PS: just for reference, the following are the lines that are suggested in the aMember manual.... none of them worked upon initial install of the script.
/usr/bin/curl -s http://yoursite.com/amember/cron.php

/usr/bin/wget -o/dev/null -O- http://yoursite.com/amember/cron.php

/usr/local/bin/lynx -source http://yoursite.com/amember/cron.php

/usr/local/bin/curl -s http://yoursite.com/amember/cron.php

/usr/local/bin/wget -o/dev/null -O- http://yoursite.com/amember/cron.php

I was not aware that curl had been disabled, but it's not surprising, considering that it is in the same class of commands as lynx, GET, and wget.

None of the example commands you have listed will work on TCH servers, as all of those commands have been disabled.


It is true that TCH made a conscious decision to remove access to curl, lynx, GET, and wget. I don't see that decision being changed any time soon. Fixing your script to run in an environment where those tools are not available falls under the category of '3rd party script support' though, and it is not something that the TCH Help Desk really can help with.

Your script needs to be modified to run so it does not depend on these commands. Usually, it does not take a lot modification to make scripts such as yours work, but what exactly would be required depends on the exact code that is in your script.

You may want to look at prior forum topics on this issue.

Command line curl was indeed disabled because it was being abused by vulnerable scripts just like the other command line programs were.

A simple way to continue to use your cron.php file the way it's currently configured (the trial amember has cron.php encoded so I can't even see if it could be modified to work from a command line) is to use php to call the php page.

Create a file in your account called something like "runcron.php":


Make sure the file is executable (permissions 755).

Then change your cron job to run "/home/youraccount/runcron.php > /dev/null" (if it's in your top directory, for example). This will give you the same net effect as what you were doing before.

We understand it's a little more of a pain to setup, but it's much less exploitable by random scripts searching for vulnerable websites.

David and Mike

Thanks so much for your suggestions. I emailed Alex over at CGI Central and he told me he set cron to be executed from his server. I am waiting to see if the cron is executed without an error, but I won't know until midnight tonight if it does indeed work.

I am going to save all your info in case the cron fails and I have to do one of these alternatives.

Very thankful for your suggestions and help! I was freaking out a bit when this all went down....

Thanks guys!

So what does one do when their shopping cart uses curl to connect to the merchant to process credit cards? Especially when it was suddenly disabled without warning effectively shutting down said store and cutting off revenue.

I can't reprogram the cart, and I can't very easily change merchant accounts especially when I'm satisfied with the one I have now.

As far as I know, this should have no effect on shopping cart programs. It has been a while since I used one with a merchant account but I believe they use CURL in a different manner.

Well it does affect this shopping cart's ability to talk to PayPal.

Here is the error:



It knows the file is there, but doesn't know it isn't working because it was disabled. I've been a very happy TCH client, but this has to work. The website/store is for a non-profit railroad museum. The museum is currently running a deficit budget, so any revenue loss is .

I would open a help desk ticket to the techs
and give them the error message.

I did and was told it has been disabled for security reasons.

However, I just went to my store and saw that an order went through about three hours ago. I tried it myself and it's working now!

I hope I get some advance notice if it will be turned off again. Was thinking about how to get around this since TCH didn't want to budge on turning cURL back on. I can set the store up for offline processing. It will collect and encrypt the credit card numbers (instead of just passing them along) and I'll type everything into the virtual terminal to charge the card. Tedious for sure, but a lot better than loosing orders because of script errors.

As mentioned only the command line curl is off
curl itself is still on and working.

Well command line should have no effect on me, as I doubt that's how my cart calls for it. The entire thing was disabled on my server. I am very happy it works now and have calmed to the point where I can again say

TCH does rawk... but it would have been nice to know that curl was going to be disabled ahead of time.

Unfortunately there are times that this is not an option. If the issue is severe enough, we have to take it down right away. Obviously, we do not want to have to do that so we can give as much notice as possible, but in this case there was little choice.

Hey Rob,

No worries. Sometimes you have to act fast to protect your clients and that was the case this time. I appreciate you looking out for us and protecting us from vulnerabilities. The cool thing is that we can just come over here and ask questions and tech support is always really fast.

You are appreciated!

And it appears cURL is down on my server again...

Curl can not go down. If curl is down PHP is down as CURL is a component of PHP. So basicly if CURL is down, then php is down and apache is down and so on.

This is the error I am getting:

Script Execution Error
The following error was returned:

There was a problem retrieving a response from the cURL executable. The executable was found, however it does not appear to be working properly.

Try now?

Thank you!

Okie-doky. Here we go again. It's been down for a few days (I've been gone) and lots of potential orders have been placed but payments can't go through without cURL working.

Hi willp,
You will need to submit a ticket about this. The techs don´t watch the forum as much as we mods do.

i just started getting cron errors last night

"/home/yourcpanelname/public_html/scripts/cron-curl.sh: line 2: /usr/bin/curl: Permission denied"

guess im gonna try mikes suggestion



Edit: TCH-Bruce - removed cpanel name from post

ok, ive tried everything mike suggested. im not having any sucess.

just an inbox full of errors.



/bin/sh: /home/yourcpanelname/public_html/runcron.php: /usr/local/bin/php
<?php
: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

The cron command you are trying here is incorrect

Try as the cron job.

Have you set up the php file as MikeJ suggested?