shell_exec does not run some shell commands

Question

For example, when I try to execute

$output=shell_exec('ls -l');
echo "<pre>$output</pre>";

It succesfully prints the output of 'ls -l'.

However, I cannot run a shell script which simply creates a file:

shell_exec('sh /home/ubuntu/Desktop/myScript.sh');

Is it about user access permissions defined in apache?

How can I fix it?

or if the command requires certain environment variable to be set that can screw things up. — Orangepill, Sep 06 '13 at 17:36
I'm just trying the command as echo "test string" >> /home/ubuntu/Desktop/out.txt within myScript.sh — yildizabdullah, Sep 06 '13 at 17:38
I've just found the answer to my question at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8668274/php-shell-exec-permission-denied-for-executing-rwxrwxrwx-shell-script — yildizabdullah, Sep 06 '13 at 17:49

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 21 '14 at 21:46

What output do you expect from that script? I shell_exec() will probably only output STDOUT, so if there's errors you will need to redirect them from STDERR like this:

<command> 2>&1

I'm guessing here, but try it with just a simple echo statement in the shell script. See if that works.

shell_exec does not run some shell commands

1 Answers1