I am making an application for school but i need to be able to manage some Services running on my Debian 7 machine. I'm running "nginx" and "PHP5-FPM" so PHP 5.4. but how can I restart or stop for example "nginx" from my PHP file? i tried
exec("/etc/init.d/nginx stop");
Also I tried
shell_exec("/etc/init.d/nginx stop");
but no result php returns me:
Stopping nginx: nginx
Thanks in advance
You need to be root to restart these services, and unless your web service (like Apache) is running as your site(s) as root, this isn't going to work. There are a couple of options at your disposal, the best one would likely depend on your situation.
You can create a two-layered approach where the front-end (run by your web server) issues the commands, and the back-end is a service running as root that executes them. This could also add a layer of security as the back-end could sanitize the commands before they're executed. The communication between the front-end and back-end could be any number of things, such as a file that the front-end writes to and the back-end reads from every few seconds, or you could go with WebSockets and make it real-time.
You could run an additional instance of your web server as root that handles just this task. You would definitely want to run this over SSL, and it's somewhat risky since if someone could inject code into one of your pages, their code would be running on your server as root.
Related
We have a PHP application which automates script commands. Many of these are through web interfaces. I want this php application user to be running lots of cli and ssh commands, so I dont really want www-data doing it, as it would involve changing lots of script files to www-data executable permissions, and we want scripts to be entered into web interfaces.
This application is cross-operating system. Ideally on anything that php runs on, but win, mac,
The important things that we need to be able to do are (I think) ...
1) Have a Web Server (It's currently Apache, and that's working cross os so that would be great), that is running under normal settings, normal user, reverse proxied to the below application on te same server.
2) Have a PHP application on a different port, running as its own user that can do whatever it wants.
The ability to just run
php -S localhost:8000
As is available in the built in php web server seems ideal for this. So...
1) Is it safe to use the PHP built in Web Server if it's behind an apache proxy? I'm assuming the fact we are proxying over the entire request anyway means no, since it says not to.
2) Is there another Web Server/PHP Server that can easily do this?
3) Is there a way of running two apache processes to do this?
4) Am i doing this the wrong way entirely? There's another app I know that does it like that, but a Java app and the whole process is started and owned by a non apache user.
Thanks in advance
Apache 2.4 + php-fpm + mod_proxy_fcgi will suit you just fine.
(to elaborate for the downvote -- php-fpm allows the PHP process to run as a separate daemon under its own userid which is exactly the privilege separation requested here)
I have created a simple website that will help me in my many projects by creating a sub domain for each new website project that I take on.
I keep going back to the older websites I've created so I have decided to keep all of them as a sub domain on localhost.
My PHP code works fine to add the information to the relevant files.
But I need to restart Apache for the changes to take affect.
I know PHP runs from the Apache service. Is it possible therefor to stop and start or even restart the Apache service from PHP code?
Yes, with exec()
exec("apachectl restart");
You might want to allow programs to close themselves before just shutting down the server, so I'd recommend:
exec("apachectl graceful");
Make sure PHP doesn't run in safemode (<= PHP 5.3), as these functions won't be available then.
Please note, this is how I restart apache on my server, you might have to adjust the command.
Also think about the permissions. Not all users (and probably not the one running php scripts) have permission to stop the server.
I need a simple "development" server for php, e.g. not apache.
In a modern environment, such as node.js, I can run node server.js inside any folder, and it will run as a server running the site specified by server.js. I can then run another node process from a different folder, and the two servers will never interfere or get in each other's way.
Is there a similar setup for php?
With apache, it seems to me that I need to "configure" the server ahead of time; I can't just drop into some folder and serve its content on some arbitrary port.
I want a command that I can use to run a php server from inside some folder, with minimum amount of configuration, for the purpose of being a development/testing only server.
For instance, suppose this server is called sps, then, I should be able to:
cd ~/code/proj1
sps
Perhaps it could require a simple config file, sps.conf that specifies the port number the server should listen to, plus maybe information about the database connection; but nothing more.
Does such a tool exist for php?
With the current version of PHP (< 5.4), you indeed have to configure a webserver (Apache, nginx, ...) to serve the directory in which you'll have your website -- the directory in which you'll work.
Generally, though, you'll only have a couple of websites, which means you won't have to re-configure your webserver too often.
And if you often have to create / test some small scripts, just create an Apache VirtualHost that points to some tests directory, in which you'll put all your test scripts (I have exactly that on my computer).
With PHP 5.4 (currently in alpha -- so not to be used on a production server just yet ^^), you'll have a built-in web server, which should pretty much answer your question.
try XAMPP Lite version http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
Is there a way to distribute a PHP program like a desktop app, so that even if the user of the app doesn't have a local server environment setup on there PCs, the app will still work?
I was thinking, if there was some type of portable server environment program which includes PHP/Apache, then we could create a batch file which when clicked would start up apache in the portable program and launch the PHP app in the user's default browser. That way PHP apps could be distributed like desktop apps.
But the question is, is there such a portable server environment program that can be used for this?
Yes, if you google for XAMPP portable, you can find several versions of fully portable, fully functioning xampp servers for the go. You would have to make sure it contains all the security settings and extensions you need.
The file your user launches should be an .html file to be sure it opens in your browser. As you need to point the user to his own localhost to run your app (otherwise PHP won't be executed and he'd see a plain html file), you'd have to create a redirect, possibly using javascript or a simple "click here to start" link.
The XAMPP only provides half of the solution:
In addition to the XAMPP you can use Phar files that give you the ability to package your PHP applications as a unit for installation and/or deployment.
You can configure a separate php file which will handle any database creations and initial configuration which can be set to run on the first time.
For a helpful start guide consider the following link:
http://phpmaster.com/packaging-your-apps-with-phar/
Finally if you want to make it seamless (easier) to the user, consider writing a Batch script which will handle running some of the task required (Such as starting apache and mysql and running run.php). Take note of using relative rather than absolute directories to make script development easier.
I need to deploy a Django project on a shared server which I have no root access for, and no administration capabilities whatsoever.
Each user on the server has a dedicated directory from which Apache serves that users files (public URL would be /~username/).
Problem is, Apache on this server has no CGI capabilities, no mod_python, no mod_wsgi. I can work with PHP, however.
What hacks do I have to deploy a Django project on this server, maybe employing PHP somehow?
This is in no way a production scenario, and any hack you can think of which will work would be great. Ignore any performance or scalability factors - this is only a POC.
Without mod_python, mod_wsgi, or fastCGI, you won't be able to do it directly.
I'm thinking what you might have to do is run the django app as standalone, listening on another port, then basically use PHP to proxy requests to it.
So you do your
python manage.py runserver 9999
maybe starting it with a nohup instead to keep it running when you logout:
nohup python manage.py runserver 9999 &
Then, in ~username, you make a proxy.php script that takes any additional PATH_INFO and makes a request to localhost:9999, passing along HTTP headers, collects the response, and sends it back to the browser.
So, eg, the browser requests http://example.com/~username/proxy.php/some/path/ and the PHP script requests http://localhost:9999/some/path/ and sends along the results.
I'm not a PHP programmer so I can't exactly show you how to write that, but I'm sure someone out there must have implemented an HTTP proxy in PHP.
If you have .htaccess support in that directory and apache has mod_proxy_http enabled, you could just have apache directly proxy the request. The documentation is pretty easy to follow. But if they don't have CGI enabled, they probably don't have that set up either.
Of course, the easiest thing would be if you could just get away with django running and listening on a public facing port and access it directly. Ie,
python manage.py runserver example.com:9999
and access it directly as http://example.com:9999/