The exec() call does not work from Web server

[krishnanunni]

Hi all,

I am a newbie to PHP. I'm trying to execute a program from my PHP script by calling the exec() function of PHP. It works fine when i try it from command line, or execute the script in command line. But when i call it from a php script in my apache, it does nothing. No errors are thrown. What i get in return is only an empty array. i'm using Ubuntu 11.10 and Apache 2.2 with PHP 5.3.3

 

thanks for helping me.

[trq]

We can't help you without seeing code.

[krishnanunni]

<?php

$htmlcontent=$_POST['source'];

$pngname=$_POST['pngname'];

$height=$_POST['height'];

$width=$_POST['width'];

 

if(!isset($htmlcontent)){die('No HTML Cannot Proceed');}

$sourcefile='/var/www/CutyCapt/Sources/sourcefile.html';

$pngfile='/var/www/CutyCapt/Captures/'.$pngname;

$hyperlink='http://my.domain.com/CutyCapt/Captures/'.$pngname;

 

$htmlfile=fopen($sourcefile,'w') or die('Source Initialization Failed');

fwrite($htmlfile,$htmlcontent);

fclose($htmlfile);

if(!file_exists($sourcefile)){die('Parser Source Does not Exist! Operation aborted');}

 

//Generate SnapShot

shell_exec('/usr/bin/CutyCapt --html='.$sourcefile.' --out='.$pngfile.' --min-height='.$height.' --min-width='.$width);

//shell_exec('/usr/bin/CutyCapt --html=source.htm --out=test.png --min-height=600 --min-width=800');

 

if(!file_exists($pngfile)){die('Image Not Created');}

else

echo $hyperlink;

?>

 

This is my code. This can work fine, when i try from terminal, with php interpreter the script works fine. But when it comes to webserver, it wont execute at all. All libs and CutyCapt resides in /usr/bin/ only. Any suggestions?

[trq]

It's likely your servers user doesn't have sufficient permissions.

[krishnanunni]

Thanks all for replies.

I got the solution, as it was because, in Apache user context, the XServer is not available. So I just executed it using xvfb-run. It worked fine.