Bash script working in command line but not through PHP

Question

I'm attempting to run the following command through PHP:

$output = shell_exec('sudo /Users/Derk/Code/automation/psc/pdfs.sh 1'); 

This runs the following bash script code:

sudo /usr/local/bin/pdftk cvcheck_template.pdf fill_form data.fdf output output.pdf flatten sudo /usr/local/bin/convert -density 150 -gravity south -geometry +0+150 -composite output.pdf signature.png new_output.pdf 

The bash script works perfectly in the command line but when I attempt to run it via PHP on a web server (MAMP) it does not give me any output. The first command seems to work but the second command gives me nothing.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

It ultimately came down to a permissions issue. The individual files touched through running Python scripts through the web browser need to have write access in the www-data group.

My mistake was that they had read and execution rights but no writing rights. So once I chmodded the appropriate files everything worked beautifully.

I also used sudo -u www-data command to test the PHP files without having to test them through the browser. That made testing a lot faster.