open a terminal session from php - php

Question

i'm trying to write a php page that
call for a server program like
gdb
the problem is if i did
<?php
exec(" gdb code", $out);
?>
the PHP call for the command and exist
BUT what i want to do is like open a "terminal" session
where the user enter commands in that program like
gdb code
..
break main
..
run
and after each command i give him the output and he give me the next command
and it won't work if i did it like this
<?php
exec(" gdb code", $out);
exec(" break", $out);
exec(" run", $out);
?>
and the PHP can be run from a browser
and i tried it with pro_open
<?php
$descriptorspec = array(
0 => array("pipe", "r"),
1 => array("pipe", "w"),
2 => array("file", "/var/www/err.log", "a")
);
$cwd = '/var/www';
$env = array('some_option' => 'aeiou');
$StdErr='';
$process = proc_open('/bin/bash', $descriptorspec, $pipes, $cwd, $env);
if (is_resource($process)) {
fwrite($pipes[0], "gcc code ");
fwrite($pipes[0], " break main");
fflush($pipes[0]);
fclose($pipes[0]);
while(!feof($pipes[1])) {
echo fgets($pipes[1], 1024);
}
echo $StdErr;
fclose($pipes[1]);
$return_value = proc_close($process);
echo "command returned : $return_value\n";
}
and thank you .

Answer 1

Edit just saw you do try it from a browser. There is absolutely no simple way to do this. If you want an interactive session from the browser, you must run a separate daemon process and forward commands to it from PHP (and return output).
This is not simple at all; so if you still feel like doing this.. I would recommend starting with how to create a deamon; and then write a tcp socket server (or other IPC).
Excuse the crappy grammar