I work with PHP 5.4, IIS 7.5.
If execute a simple command, it works:
<?php
exec("dir", $r);
print_r($r);
?>
But if open .exe file, it doesn't work, the page is loading until the php timeout and doesn't open the notepad:
<?php
exec("notepad.exe", $r);
print_r($r);
?>
And if execute the notepad's php in command line, it works:
php -f <file>
I think that the problem is with IIS, but I don't know what. Thanks!
UPDATE
I did another test case and doesn't work, the page finishes loading but doesn't delete the task:
<?php
$r = exec("SCHTASKS.exe /Delete /TN TaskTest /F");
print_r($r);
?>
The IIS_IUSRS have permission for execute the schtasks.
SOLUTION
Notepad doesn't open because is a interactive program.
For Tasks scheduler, gives read and write permissions to the task folder (C:\Windows\System32\Tasks) to IUSR.
What makes you think it isn't working?
Be aware that windows services cannot normally interact with the desktop, so it may be the case that notepad is starting, just not anywhere you can see it - and as PHP will wait for it to terminate, and nobody can see it to terminate it, it'll timeout, as you're seeing.
It may also be the case that the user that the web server is running as does not have execute permissions on the folder that notepad is in (assuming it had the relevant path).
The problem is that you are instructing exec to gather and return the output of the spawned process and the process must terminate for this to happen. Since Notepad does not terminate immediately PHP is stuck waiting forever (you can test this by running any non-interactive process instead, for example net.exe).
Takeaway: exec and friends are not meant to launch interactive processes.
In any case, exec will spawn a command interpreter which in turn will spawn Notepad. However, due to security features introduced in recent Windows versions, and depending on the user that IIS is running as, these processes will not create visible windows on your current desktop so there will be nothing for you to see. You will be able to verify that they were spawned using Task Manager or another equivalent program.
Related
This question already has answers here:
How do you run a .bat file from PHP?
(7 answers)
php How do I start an external program running - Having trouble with system and exec
(3 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
Before everyone starts butting in with "security risks" "cant be done" stop there and read the ENTIRE post
I have a web server set up from a home laptop which is serving as a games web server im trying to create a GUI so its easier for us to maintain the server and im trying to use batch files to do the actions on the computer
So to put this into perspective I have my index file index.php
<form method="post">
<input type="submit" name="startServer" value="Start Server">
</form>
<?
if(isset($_POST['startServer'])){
exec('batch/startServer.bat');
}
?>
And my startServer.bat will run on the laptop running the server and will do all the actions nesscary to start our game server so there is another directory "Instance" containing an excutable "Server.exe" which the batch file will run
The issue im having is running the web server and testing this it doesnt work if I open the batch file directly it works but it seems the php code doesnt work
For clarification I am using apache and my browser is chrome
And just a quick question for anyone willing to answer the route im going is correct right? Using php would allow everything to run on the machine hosting the server so the end user will only see the GUI and the server would run the batch files and everything on the web server and not the local machine if that makes sense?
EDIT: To be more clear about what's going on the function exec runs but it just hangs like the application is loading I need a solution that will actually open the application are my host computer for example if I wanted to open up notepad I press a button on the Web server and notepad will open on the computer
EDIT 2: I would like to note that I dont exactly need to use the exec function and I have tried all the answers to date 7/19/2017:3:45pm none are working if I do something on the sorts echo exec('start text.bat'); I will get a This is a test to show your batch is working and simply just have echo ..... in the batch file the main issue I am having is the server is not physically showing the opened file like displaying the GUI lets just take notepad for example
I can open notepad and get some return value as long as my batch file closes notepad once its finished running however the GUI for notepad is never displayed and thats very important
I read in a few articles about using apache as a service which im pretty sure I am but I do know that xaammp has suffiecient priveleges and I have checked the box that says "Allow apache to interact with desktop" however no GUI is popping up thats the main point I guess im trying to get across is I need to display the GUI not just open the file as a background service.
If it makes answering easier I am open to switching programming languages if theres one that can do what I want easier
Your theory is correct, it will run on the server however you may have issues running applications directly from php (with this method afaik it does not detach from the PHP, and the webapp "hangs" while the application is running).
Make sure: return values are printed / logged. Just an
<?php
if(isset($_POST['startServer'])){
echo exec('batch/startServer.bat');
}
?>
Could point you to the right direction. The exec function may have been disabled in your distribution.
Using
<?php
instead of
<?
is highly advised, by default short_tags are not enabled in most distributions (wamp, xamp, etc).
Set debug mode and print everything to get information about the problem:
<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
if(isset($_POST['startServer'])){
echo exec('batch/startServer.bat');
}
?>
If you don't have any response, try a simple batch file with a "hello world" to test if it works.
Be aware, the rights and limitations are comes from the php environment, the batch file inherits the same rights running the PHP code / Apache (in case of mod_php)
In php manual about exec function, there is a note :
Note: If a program is started with this function, in order for it to
continue running in the background, the output of the program must be
redirected to a file or another output stream. Failing to do so will
cause PHP to hang until the execution of the program ends.
I think "hangs like the application is loading" is your application waiting for the bat file terminated / closed to get the output result
Let's try another approach, i found it here, the concept is to create a scheduler that execute the program you want and call it using command.
hope this help :
shell_exec('SCHTASKS /F /Create /TN _notepad /TR "notepad.exe" /SC DAILY /RU INTERACTIVE');
shell_exec('SCHTASKS /RUN /TN "_notepad"');
shell_exec('SCHTASKS /DELETE /TN "_notepad" /F');
If this doesn't work
Check whether you have declared safe_mode = Off inside php.ini
From here:
How do you run a .bat file from PHP?
Have you tried:
system("cmd /c C:[path to file]"); ?
You might need to run it via cmd, eg:
system("cmd /c C:[path to file]");
Or Try following options
1.
<?php
exec('c:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c START C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.bat');
?>
2.
When you use the exec() function, it is as though you have a cmd terminal open and are typing commands straight to it.
Use single quotes like this $str = exec('start /B Path\to\batch.bat');
The /B means the bat will be executed in the background so the rest of the php will continue after running that line, as opposed to $str = exec('start /B /C command', $result); where command is executed and then result is stored for later use.
<?php
pclose(popen("start /B test.bat", "r")); die();
?>
i think this is a containment issue.
if you run the app under the process of php run by iiswebuser when php terminates it will close all spawned child processes in windows. there is a very quick way a command to break an application out of the child process containment using the start command.
if(isset($_POST['startServer'])){
exec('start batch/startServer.bat');
}
Diagram of containment as i explained it (simplisticly)
IIS (IIS runs as an IISUser)
php (application)
cmd.exe (batch)
using start bring it to the root of that tree
IIS (IIS runs as an IISUser)
php (application)
cmd.exe (batch)
Baim Wrong was correct in the first part of the response: you have to redirect output of the script or your PHP code will hang. Also, you have to move process in the background.
This is easy to do on *nix:
system("/usr/local/bin/shell.sh >> /tmp/log.log 2>&1 &");
I know that you can redirect the output on Windows but not sure how to move the process in the background. You should check DOS manual or try with power shell.
you can use either system or exec php function
$path = __DIR__ . '/batch/startServer.bat';
exec('cmd /c start ' . $path);
or
$path = __DIR__ . '/batch/startServer.bat';
$lastLine = system('cmd /c start ' . $path);
You are having some issue about running application directly from exec. I was having the same issue of running file using exec. It was solved by passing another parameter 2>&1.
exec('some_command 2>&1', $output);
print_r($output); // to see the response to your command
Check the values printed by output see exec function
<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$output = array();
if(isset($_POST['startServer'])){
exec('batch/startServer.bat 2>&1', $output);
print_r($output);
} else {
echo "Not posted";
}
?>
I am trying to execute Linux shell command from php but there is no output on web page. If I am trying to execute the php page from linux cosole its working fine.
PHP Code:
<?php
$result = shell_exec('asterisk -rx "core show channels concise"');
$ccount =shell_exec('asterisk -rx "core show channels count"');
echo $result;
echo $ccount;
?>
Above code is not giving any output on web page. But on linux console its woking. e.g.
[abc#host sysadminman]# php myfile.php
Asterisk control socket permissions can also be changed easily in /etc/asterisk.conf:
[files]
astctlpermissions = 0660
astctlowner = root
astctlgroup = apache
astctl = asterisk.ctl
First of all your question is incomplete as you not showing what is expected output. But aside from this you are doing a few common mistakes there.
First you are testing your script as root (# php ...) but your httpd is NOT serving your scripts as root. So your tests are useless. You should switch to right user (most likely www-data and then check to run your script from shell. Most likely it will fail for one of two common reasons - insufficient permissions to run asterisk program or incomplete $PATH not pointing to the place where asterisk is.
I agree to Marcin.
I would suggest you write script to execute those commands and put result to some storage (such as text or database). Use cron to run it in root. Then you read the data from storage on web page.
If you want real time response, you have to run cron all the time though it consume server resource. That is trade-off you have to consider. Its depends on what you wanna achieve from the web site.
Use sudo to run thoes commands as root or Asterisk user. You can configure sudo to allow execution without password to only specific commands.
check disable_functions in php.ini. Mb shell_exec just off for web server
I've installed Apache 2.4 with PHP 5.4 on Windows Server 2008 following instructions from this manual:
Apache installing manual.
Apache runs as a service now.
My application requires a php websocket script to run in the background. I'm running it manually with:
php myscript.php
The question is: Is there a way to start a background script automatically on system(apache) restart?
I found the following topic, but I didn't know where I could find an apache startup script for Windows.
Any help will be much appriciated.
I come up with a solution :)
Create an environment variable pointing to your Apache directory
APACHE_HOME = C:/PATH/TO_APACHE
Rename %APACHE_HOME%\bin\httpd.exe to %APACHE_HOME%\bin\httpdVendor.exe
Create a batch file and put the following code :
php myscript.php
%APACHE_HOME%\bin\httpdVendor.exe -k runservice
exit 0
Download/Install the free software BatToExeConverter (next, next, ...)
Open the installed converter and open your freshly created batch file
Click on the button Build EXE (let the default configuration)
Save the file : %APACHE_HOME%\bin\httpd.exe
Start your Apache Server
Tested on : Windows 7, Apache 2.4, Advanced Bat to Exe Converter 2.92
Use built in Windows Task Scheduler which triggers .bat script, which calls curl with defined url.
Download curl from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html and extract curl.exe on any directory, but we will use c:\backgroundtasks
Adjust script below to your needs:
cd c:\
cd c:\backgroundtasks
curl http://localhost/path/to/script.php
exit
Configure Task Scheduler to run as basic task:
General tab - as system account (to run when you are not logged in server)
Triggers tab - adjust frequency
Settings tab - at bottom set If the task is already running... to Stop the existing instance
The best method here would be to use Windows services dependencies.
Make a php-websocket-server.cmd file with any necessary environment settings (e.g. changing to a directory, setting PATH, etc...) with the last line:
php myscript.php
Install the Windows Server Resource Kit Tools, to get srvany and instsrv to create a user defined service. Note the install path as you'll need it in the next step.
Open a cmd shell and run:
<path_to_resource_kit>\instsrv PHPWebSocketServer <path_to_resource_kit>\srvany.exe
Next, create a file php-websocket-server.reg containing the following (update for your environment):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PHPWebSocketServer\Parameters]
"Application"="c:\\path\\to\\php-websocket-server.cmd"
Import it by double-clicking or regedit /s php-websocket-server.reg
Back in your cmd shell:
sc config Apache2.4 depend= PHPWebSocketServer
to make the Apache2.4* service depend on your php service. Now, when Apache is started, the php service will be brought up first. And likewise, if you stop the php service Apache will stop along with it.
*the howto indicates that the service is named "Apache2.4" but you may want to verify in your installation.
When running as service, you won't have the startup script.
Execute some service implementation that allows running other programs as services, and then make the new service (which is running your script) a dependency of the Apache service. However, this will not restart the script when apache restarts.
One possible solution using SrvStart, and another using ServiceEx.
Perhaps don't install Apache as a service, and then edit the startup/restart script, and use the above method to run Apache as service (instead of using Apache's own installer).
Create bat file,e eg 'myphp.bat' containing path/php myscript.php. Include the correct path to php if it's not path'd.
create a bat file, eg runmyphp.bat containing
AT 00:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F "cmd /c /path/myphp.bat", again including the correct path.
Then use explorer to drag runmyphp into the startup folder, so it will always run on system startup.
Google 'windows at command' or 'windows cron' to get all the correct syntax for the 'at' command, but you can currently find a detailed explanation here.
I found another answer C:\wamp\scripts\wampserver.lib.php this file is run every time when your wamp starts
include your file path include_once("file_path"); to this file and its done . this is perfect solution which you want
Enjoy!!!!!!!!!
Although the solution of Halayem Anis is very creative, I think its important to note that you can never be sure that a PHP script keeps running in the background. So if you choose to start your script on "Apache start", then you probably end op resetting Apache quite often, simple to reboot your script.
I assume that's even how you came to this question, as on a normal server you never have to touch the Apache reset button. It starts on system start and then it just runs. If that was the case, you could simple run your php myscript.php command on start up.
Considering there is no way to make sure the script keeps running, I would use a different approach, where I check if it is running and if not, restart it.
So the first step is to make it possible to track if the script is running. I would go for the simple approach where your myscript.php writes a single byte to a file every 5seconds or so. This way I can use the last modified time on the file to see if it is still running, because last modified time + 5 seconds < now == not running.
You could also store the last access time in a database every 5 seconds or so. Might be slightly faster then accessing files if you have a lot of traffic.
The second part is to have each request check if the script is running. For this two work I would use the PHP.ini to prepend a php script on every request. You can do it with the auto_append_file option.
This prepend script would work like this:
<?php
$filename = 'checkonline.txt';
$cmd = "php myscript.php";
if (filemtime($filename)+5<time()) {
//run in background without freezing php
//based on code posted on PHP exec manual, linked below
if (substr(php_uname(), 0, 7) == "Windows"){
pclose(popen("start /B ". $cmd, "r"));
}
else {
exec($cmd . " > /dev/null &");
}
}
?>
Make sure to check how filemtime and exec work and what you need to keep in mind. They work slightly different on Windows/*nix.
Wrap-up all your required processes in a batch file and use RunAsService
With some tweaking, you can ensure that your service starts before Apache.
I know there's been similar questions but they don't solve my problem...
After checking out the folders from the repo (which works fine).
A method is called from jquery to execute the following in php.
exec ('svn cleanup '.$checkout_dir);
session_write_close(); //Some suggestion that was supposed to help but doesn't
exec ('svn commit -m "SAVE DITAMAP" '.$file);
These would output the following:
svn cleanup USER_WORKSPACE/0A8288
svn commit -m "SAVE DITAMAP" USER_WORKSPACE/0A8288/map.ditamap
1) the first line (exec ('svn cleanup')...executes fine.
2) as soon as I call svn commit then my server hangs, and everything goes to hell
The apache error logs show this error:
[notice] Child 3424: Waiting 240 more seconds for 4 worker threads to finish.
I'm not using the php_svn module because I couldn't get it to compile on windows.
Does anyone know what is going on here? I can execute the exact same cmd from the terminal windows and it executes just fine.
since i cannot find any documentation on jquery exec(), i assume this is calling php. i copied this from the documentation page:
When calling exec() from within an apache php script, make sure to take care of stdout, stderr and stdin (as in the example below). If you forget this and your shell command produces output the sh and apache deamons may never return (they will normally time out after a few minutes). From the calling web page the script may seem to not return any data.
If you want to start a php process that continues to run independently from apache (with a different parent pid) use nohub. Example:
exec('nohup php process.php > process.out 2> process.err < /dev/null &');
hope it helps
Okay, I've found the problem.
It actually didn't have anything to do with the exec running the background, especially because a one file commit doesn't take a lot of time.
The problem was that the commit was expecting a --username and --password that didn't show up, and just caused apache to hang.
To solve this, I changed the svnserve.conf in the folder where I installed svn and changed it to allow non-auth users write access.
I don't think you'd normally want to do this, but my site already authenticates the user name and pass upon logging in.
Alternatively you could
I am trying to run a php script on my remote Virtual Private Server through the command line. The process I follow is:
Log into the server using PuTTY
On the command line prompt, type> php myScript.php
The script runs just fine. BUT THE PROBLEM is that the script stops running as soon as I close the PuTTY console window.
I need the script to keep on running endlessly. How can I do that? I am running Debian on the server.
Thanks in advance.
I believe that Ben has the correct answer, namely use the nohup command. nohup stands for nohangup and means that your program should ignore a hangup signal, generated when you're putty session is disconnected either by you logging out or because you have been timed out.
You need to be aware that the output of your command will be appended to a file in the current directory named nohup.out (or $HOME/nohup.out if permissions prevent you from creating nohup.out in the current directory). If your program generates a lot of output then this file can get very large, alternatively you can use shell redirection to redirect the output of the script to another file.
nohup php myscript.php >myscript.output 2>&1 &
This command will run your script and send all output (both standard and error) to the file myscript.output which will be created anew each time you run the program.
The final & causes the script to run in the background so you can do other things whilst it is running or logout.
An easy way is to run it though nohup:
nohup php myScript.php &
If you run the php command in a screen, detach the screen, then it won't terminate when you close your console.
Screen is a terminal multiplexer that allows you to manage many processes through one physical terminal. Each process gets its own virtual window, and you can bounce between virtual windows interacting with each process. The processes managed by screen continue to run when their window is not active.