Can't run bash script via php on shared host - php

Question

What I want to achive:
I want to update my git repository (which holds my laravel app) on my shared host whenever i push something into my repository. To do so, I have a deploy.sh script on my shared host which pulls my repository and deletes all caches from my laravel app.
In order to run this bash script automatically I also got a php script which is triggerd by a Github webhook whenever i push something into my repository.
My problem:
I try to run my bash script on my shared host with my php script but that doesn't work.
What i tried:
My bash script by itself runs perfectly fine when I execute it manually on my shared host via ssh. But it won't get executed by my php file.
PHP
<?php
function debug_to_console($data) {
$output = $data;
if (is_array($output))
$output = implode(',', $output);
echo "<script>console.log('Debug Objects: " . $output . "' );</script>";
}
$access_token = 'maxi9000';
$client_token = $_GET['token'];
if ($client_token !== $access_token)
{
echo 'error 403';
}
else{
$old = getcwd();
echo '</br>'.$old;
$file = $old.'/mhraschan.com/deploy.sh';
echo '</br>'.$file;
if(is_file($file)){
echo '</br>Is file';
if(!is_executable($file)) {
chmod($file, 0755);
echo '</br>file not executable - run chmod';
if(is_executable($file)) echo "File is now executable";
}
//Try to run bash file
$return = shell_exec('bash '. $file);
echo '</br>Shell return: '.$return;
debug_to_console('Shell return'.$return);
}
}
?>
Output of my browser when running the php script manually:
/data/web/e115665/html/test
/data/web/e115665/html/test/mhraschan.com/deploy.sh
Is file
file not executable - run chmod
Shell return:
So my file is not executable and runs chmod but after that it seems that it still is not executable because it doesn't run that line again: if(is_executable($file)) echo "File is now executable";
Also i dont get any output from my shell_exec command.
Any solution?

Answer 1

This is almost certainly an issue with permissions - remember, your web server is not running as root; if you're using Apache, you're probably running as www-data - other web servers will use other users. Thus, your attempt to chmod the file is failing, since you don't have permission to change the permissions on that file. And if the permissions for the file do not include "executable" for the web server's user, the script will not run.
Check the return value from the chmod function - I think you'll find it's false (meaning that it failed, per the documentation).