Question

Goal: To launch VLC player through PHP code, and play the specified video in the player.
OS: Ubuntu 11.10

Problem: Please refer my script below (still new to PHP), I see no video playing, and not even a background VLC process running on executing this script. Can you please point out the issue and appropriate documentation that will help me make this work? If I issue the same command on shell, the video plays, but on using “system” command of PHP, no video plays.

Script:

<?php
system('/usr/bin/vlc /home/atish/Videos/TEDGary.avi', $retval);
echo $retval;
?>

Output on the webpage:

0

Bigger goal: I want provide a webinterface for the user to run my application (C-code). My c-code application that implements some video transcoding and management workflows, I want to be able to run that C code in background, and when it finishes, I want to play the video in VLC.

Thankyou.

Answer 1

Allow everyone to use the X server:

xhost +

In your script, set the DISPLAY variable when executing the command:

system('DISPLAY=:0 /usr/bin/vlc /home/atish/Videos/TEDGary.avi', $retval);

However, I’d also recommend you to consider the security implications when using xhost.