Can't run htpasswd in script

Junior WebHelper Joined: 28 Jan 2004 Posts: 1

I am writing the user registration page for a website and using htpasswd to add the user and password to the websites user file. The program executes fine but it will not add the user to password file. I have written the program in C and I'm using the system() command to do this. The C code lookes like this...

strcpy(system_command,"/usr/bin/htpasswd -b /var/www/users ");
strcat(system_command,new_lender->username);
strcat(system_command," ");
strcat(system_command,new_lender->password);
system(system_command);

I have used this code on other websites and had no problems. I cannot figure out why it will not run on this server. I thought it might be file permisions but I did a chmod 777 on the directory the file is located in and the file itself. (i know this is bad...just for testing) I changed the owner to apache. still nothing. I put in the scipt to output the command and it looks fine. Copy and paste from webpage to shell and it executes and creates the entry in the password file. (logged in as root)

The box I am using for development is running RedHat 9.x and using the Apache that came with it. Did Apache add some restrictions to prevent the execution of htpasswd from a cgi script?

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks,

Don