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Executing unix shell commands using PHP Running shell commands using PHP script Execute a shell command through php and display it in browser? I have already referred to the above links. But, I'm experiencing an issue in displaying the linux shell command process in the browser. My linux command: top -n 1 and wanted to display them using php in the browser..

myscript.php
<?php
$var = shell_exec('top -n 1');
echo "<pre>$var</pre>";
?>

Now, when I refresh my browser, I'm unable to see the output in the browser.

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3 Answers 3

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Ok, I see your problem Rana. There some shell commands in linux needed to be set along with the TERM enviroment variable. top is one of them. In addition -b flag must be used in order to get the result from the output buffer, that in this case is the terminal... Try this code:

<?php
$var = shell_exec('TERM=xterm /usr/bin/top -n1 -b');
echo "<pre>$var</pre>";
?>
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1 Comment

Hey Andreas, thats worked!!. I appreciate your efforts. Thanks alot. Now I can execute the shell command with the php script and display it in the browser.
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Since the user browser is not an interactive terminal then we have to execute your last command in every postback, in order to simlate the linux top command.

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1 Comment

Hi Andreas, so what can we perform at this point to execute the top command using my php script. I wanted to display the info on browser once the php script shell_exec command is requested.
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Your script looks OK, let's make sure that your environment is correctly set up by changing the script to do something very simple. Try replacing all code with something like 

<?php
echo "Hello World";

If that works, then some further debugging: Are you on a shared webhost where PHP is possibly configured to disable execution of scripts? See if shell_exec is disabled as detailed here (replace the string exec with shell_exec).

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1 Comment

Hi Martin, my script is working well with ls -l and other linux commands. But only the top command is not working.

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