How to run perl script with a few arguments from php

Question

My html webpage calls a php script to upload files to the server from a local computer as follows.

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="upload.php" method="POST">
<p><b><h3>  <font color="#003366"> (1) Upload your reading text file.  </font> 
</h3> </b> </p>
<INPUT type="file" name="uploaded" size="50" >
<br/>
<input type="submit" name="files" value="upload">
</form> 

In order to process with an uploaded file, my php script calls a shell script

$output=system('/bin/sh connector_0.sh');  

and my shell script is composed of a series of python/perl scripts.

#!/bin/sh

python main_senselearner_final_0.py 

senseLearner.pl -i Uploaded_Files/slinput_0.txt -o Uploaded_Files/presloutput_0
.txt -model modelNNCollocations -model modelJJCollocations -model modelVBColloc
ations -pos

python smutngslout_0.py 

python genhtml_0.py 

Now, the problem is the following: all the python scripts in shell script worked fine through php. But the perl script didn't work.

When I run the shell script by myself in my server, all four scripts in the shell worked perfectly. However, when I run the shell script from php, only the perl script doesn't work.

Would you please give me any tips to solve this problem?

Many thanks!!!

Answer 1

This is very likely a permissions problem. Try setting the files that the perl script reads to a+rw and see if it works then. If so, then you need to find out the user running php (likely the apache user) and make sure that they can read/write the relevant files. Also make sure the Perl script is executable by the php user (apache).

Answer 2

There is a possibility that the user that Apache/PHP is running as (usually apache) does not have permissions for Uploaded_Files/slinput_0.txt or Uploaded_Files/presloutput_0.txt.

Just guessing but apache would need read for the slinput_0.txt file, read/write for presloutput_0.txt and read/write/exec for the directory Uploaded_Files

The reason it works when you try it is you are running as your user and most likely have permissions to write to the webroot.

Answer 3

I'd try
senseLearner.pl -i Up ... -pos > /var/log/senseLearner.log 2>&1
(and look to that log file after)

and maybe you can try to specify interpreter like
/path/to/perl senseLearner.pl -i Up ... -pos > /var/log/senseLearner.log 2>&1