I've created a script that uses psexec to call another script which calls psexec to run a command line program of mine.
The reason for so many calls to psexec and other scripts is solely so that my PHP script doesn't have to wait for the process to finish before finishing it's output to the browser.
Is there a way I can do this without needing to use psexec? I'm having issues with psexec so I'd like to just completely remove it from my program.
I'm running Windows 2008
EDIT: I changed the title, I guess this would be a more accurate title. I found out the 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. on php.net's page on exec(), but wasn't sure how to do that.
Include a redirection in the command line:
exec('program.exe > NUL')
or you could modify your program to explicitly close standard output, in C this would be
CloseHandle(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE));
It is possible (the documentation doesn't say) that you might need to redirect/close both the standard output and standard error:
exec('program.exe > NUL 2> NUL')
or
CloseHandle(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE));
CloseHandle(GetStdHandle(STD_ERROR_HANDLE));
$command = 'start /B program.exe > NUL';
pclose( popen( $command, 'r' ) );
For more info:
http://humblecontributions.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-run-php-process-in-background.html
Try the Windows 'start' command: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770297%28WS.10%29.aspx
Using start /B has certain limitations when calling scripts that are spawning sub-processes.
The following method spawns a sub-process using PowerShell to handle such cases:
function execInBackgroundWindows($filePath, $workingDirectory, $arguments)
{
$cmd = "powershell.exe Start-Process -FilePath $filePath -WorkingDirectory $workingDirectory -ArgumentList '$arguments'";
shell_exec($cmd);
}
execInBackgroundWindows('curl.exe','c:\temp','-X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d #test.json http://127.0.0.1:4000/myapp');
Related
On Linux I can use shell_exec() as below to run the command in background:
shell_exec("/usr/bin/nohup curl -o /dev/null --data \"$data\" $url >/dev/null 2>&1 &");
Note that the above line doesn't wait for the result and the code will resume instantly.
How can I achieve it on windows? It's preferable to be something built-in for windows.
I'd check out the Symfony Process component for this use case. It provides methods for executing synchronously and asynchronously. It can be easily installed through Composer, but it requires PHP 7.1 at least.
The documentation can be found here: https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/process.html
An example for your use case could look like this:
$process = new Process(['curl', '--data', $data, $url]);
$process->start();
Note that I omitted the -o option because the output of the sub process won't show up unless you request it explicitly.
A quick browse yielded some posts that said that the start() method blocks on Windows but it seems that a patch has already been implemented and merged: https://github.com/symfony/symfony/pull/10420
EDIT: If you don't want to use a library, you can use a combination of popen(), pclose() and the Windows tool start:
pclose(popen('start /B curl --data "'.$data.'" '.$url, 'r'));
This runs the program in background without opening a window and immediately returns.
EDIT 2: Source for the trick with start /B: http://php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php#86329
I have a process intensive task that I would like to run in the background.
The user clicks on a page, the PHP script runs, and finally, based on some conditions, if required, then it has to run a shell script, E.G.:
shell_exec('php measurePerformance.php 47 844 email#yahoo.com');
Currently I use shell_exec, but this requires the script to wait for an output. Is there any way to execute the command I want without waiting for it to complete?
How about adding.
"> /dev/null 2>/dev/null &"
shell_exec('php measurePerformance.php 47 844 email#yahoo.com > /dev/null 2>/dev/null &');
Note this also gets rid of the stdio and stderr.
This will execute a command and disconnect from the running process. Of course, it can be any command you want. But for a test, you can create a php file with a sleep(20) command it.
exec("nohup /usr/bin/php -f sleep.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &");
You can also give your output back to the client instantly and continue processing your PHP code afterwards.
This is the method I am using for long-waiting Ajax calls which would not have any effect on client side:
ob_end_clean();
ignore_user_abort();
ob_start();
header("Connection: close");
echo json_encode($out);
header("Content-Length: " . ob_get_length());
ob_end_flush();
flush();
// execute your command here. client will not wait for response, it already has one above.
You can find the detailed explanation here: http://oytun.co/response-now-process-later
On Windows 2003, to call another script without waiting, I used this:
$commandString = "start /b c:\\php\\php.EXE C:\\Inetpub\\wwwroot\\mysite.com\\phpforktest.php --passmsg=$testmsg";
pclose(popen($commandString, 'r'));
This only works AFTER giving changing permissions on cmd.exe - add Read and Execute for IUSR_YOURMACHINE (I also set write to Deny).
Use PHP's popen command, e.g.:
pclose(popen("start c:\wamp\bin\php.exe c:\wamp\www\script.php","r"));
This will create a child process and the script will excute in the background without waiting for output.
Sure, for windows you can use:
$WshShell = new COM("WScript.Shell");
$oExec = $WshShell->Run("C:/path/to/php-win.exe -f C:/path/to/script.php", 0, false);
Note:
If you get a COM error, add the extension to your php.ini and restart apache:
[COM_DOT_NET]
extension=php_com_dotnet.dll
If it's off of a web page, I recommend generating a signal of some kind (dropping a file in a directory, perhaps) and having a cron job pick up the work that needs to be done. Otherwise, we're likely to get into the territory of using pcntl_fork() and exec() from inside an Apache process, and that's just bad mojo.
That will work but you will have to be careful not to overload your server because it will create a new process every time you call this function which will run in background. If only one concurrent call at the same time then this workaround will do the job.
If not then I would advice to run a message queue like for instance beanstalkd/gearman/amazon sqs.
I am trying to manage a queue of files waiting to be processed by ffmpeg. A page is run using CRON that runs through a database of files waiting to be processed. The page then builds the commands and sends them to the command line using exec().
However, when the PHP page is run from the command line or CRON, it runs the exec() OK, but does not return to the PHP page to continue updating the database and other functions.
Example:
<?php
$cmd = "ffmpeg inpupt.mpg output.m4v";
exec($cmd . ' 2>&1', $output, $return);
//Page continues...but not executed
$update = mysql_query("UPDATE.....");
?>
When this page is run from the command line, the command is run using exec() but then the rest of the page is not executed. I think the problem may be that I am running a command using exec() in a page run from the command line.
Is it possible to run a PHP page in full from the command line which includes exec()?
Or is there a better way of doing this?
Thank you.
I wrote an article about Running a Background Process from PHP on Linux some time ago:
<?php system( 'sh test.sh >/dev/null &' ); ?>
Notice the & operator at the end. This starts a process that returns control to the shell immediately AND CONTINUES TO RUN in the background.
More examples:
<!--
saving standard output to a file
very important when your process runs in background
as this is the only way the process can error/success
-->
<?php system( 'sh test.sh >test-out.txt &' ); ?>
<!--
saving standard output and standard error to files
same as above, most programs log errors to standard error hence its better to capture both
-->
<?php system( 'sh test.sh >test-out.txt 2>test-err.txt &' ); ?>
Have you tried using CURL instead?
Unsure but probably thats due to the shell constraints of cron processes if it works as a web page then use it as a web page, setup a cron job that calls wget wherever_your_page_is and it will be called via your web server and should mimic your tests.
I'm looking for the best, or any way really to start a process from php in the background so I can kill it later in the script.
Right now, I'm using: shell_exec($Command);
The problem with this is it waits for the program to close.
I want something that will have the same effect as nohup when I execute the shell command. This will allow me to run the process in the background, so that later in the script it can be closed. I need to close it because this script will run on a regular basis and the program can't be open when this runs.
I've thought of generating a .bat file to run the command in the background, but even then, how do I kill the process later?
The code I've seen for linux is:
$PID = shell_exec("nohup $Command > /dev/null & echo $!");
// Later on to kill it
exec("kill -KILL $PID");
EDIT: Turns out I don't need to kill the process
shell_exec('start /B "C:\Path\to\program.exe"');
The /B parameter is key here.
I can't seem to find where I found this anymore. But this works for me.
Will this function from the PHP Manual help?
function runAsynchronously($path,$arguments) {
$WshShell = new COM("WScript.Shell");
$oShellLink = $WshShell->CreateShortcut("temp.lnk");
$oShellLink->TargetPath = $path;
$oShellLink->Arguments = $arguments;
$oShellLink->WorkingDirectory = dirname($path);
$oShellLink->WindowStyle = 1;
$oShellLink->Save();
$oExec = $WshShell->Run("temp.lnk", 7, false);
unset($WshShell,$oShellLink,$oExec);
unlink("temp.lnk");
}
Tried to achieve the same on a Windows 2000 server with PHP 5.2.8.
None of the solutions worked for me. PHP kept waiting for the response.
Found the solution to be :
$cmd = "E:\PHP_folder_path\php.exe E:\some_folder_path\backgroundProcess.php";
pclose(popen("start /B ". $cmd, "a")); // mode = "a" since I had some logs to edit
From the php manual for exec:
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.
ie pipe the output into a file and php won't wait for it:
exec('myprog > output.txt');
From memory, I believe there is a control character that you can prepend (like you do with #) to the exec family of commands that also prevents execution from pausing - can't remember what it is though.
Edit Found it! On unix, programs executed with & prepended will run in the background. Sorry, doesn't help you much.
On my Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 machines, the only solution that worked reliably within pclose/popen was to invoke powershell's Start-Process command, as in:
pclose(popen('powershell.exe "Start-Process foo.bat -WindowStyle Hidden"','r'));
Or more verbosely if you want to supply arguments and redirect outputs:
pclose(popen('powershell.exe "Start-Process foo.bat
-ArgumentList \'bar\',\'bat\'
-WindowStyle Hidden
-RedirectStandardOutput \'.\\console.out\'
-RedirectStandardError \'.\\console.err\'"','r'));
I have a process intensive task that I would like to run in the background.
The user clicks on a page, the PHP script runs, and finally, based on some conditions, if required, then it has to run a shell script, E.G.:
shell_exec('php measurePerformance.php 47 844 email#yahoo.com');
Currently I use shell_exec, but this requires the script to wait for an output. Is there any way to execute the command I want without waiting for it to complete?
How about adding.
"> /dev/null 2>/dev/null &"
shell_exec('php measurePerformance.php 47 844 email#yahoo.com > /dev/null 2>/dev/null &');
Note this also gets rid of the stdio and stderr.
This will execute a command and disconnect from the running process. Of course, it can be any command you want. But for a test, you can create a php file with a sleep(20) command it.
exec("nohup /usr/bin/php -f sleep.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &");
You can also give your output back to the client instantly and continue processing your PHP code afterwards.
This is the method I am using for long-waiting Ajax calls which would not have any effect on client side:
ob_end_clean();
ignore_user_abort();
ob_start();
header("Connection: close");
echo json_encode($out);
header("Content-Length: " . ob_get_length());
ob_end_flush();
flush();
// execute your command here. client will not wait for response, it already has one above.
You can find the detailed explanation here: http://oytun.co/response-now-process-later
On Windows 2003, to call another script without waiting, I used this:
$commandString = "start /b c:\\php\\php.EXE C:\\Inetpub\\wwwroot\\mysite.com\\phpforktest.php --passmsg=$testmsg";
pclose(popen($commandString, 'r'));
This only works AFTER giving changing permissions on cmd.exe - add Read and Execute for IUSR_YOURMACHINE (I also set write to Deny).
Use PHP's popen command, e.g.:
pclose(popen("start c:\wamp\bin\php.exe c:\wamp\www\script.php","r"));
This will create a child process and the script will excute in the background without waiting for output.
Sure, for windows you can use:
$WshShell = new COM("WScript.Shell");
$oExec = $WshShell->Run("C:/path/to/php-win.exe -f C:/path/to/script.php", 0, false);
Note:
If you get a COM error, add the extension to your php.ini and restart apache:
[COM_DOT_NET]
extension=php_com_dotnet.dll
If it's off of a web page, I recommend generating a signal of some kind (dropping a file in a directory, perhaps) and having a cron job pick up the work that needs to be done. Otherwise, we're likely to get into the territory of using pcntl_fork() and exec() from inside an Apache process, and that's just bad mojo.
That will work but you will have to be careful not to overload your server because it will create a new process every time you call this function which will run in background. If only one concurrent call at the same time then this workaround will do the job.
If not then I would advice to run a message queue like for instance beanstalkd/gearman/amazon sqs.