Question

I am writing a PHP script that will launch a program on the server.

I do so with:

exec('myAppName');

This line of code “works” in that it actually executes the program, however, I can’t get the it to return (continue past) from this line.

It will just hang there, until I either manually close the program that was opened or the max_execution_time is exceeded.

Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

To background a process in PHP, you’ll need to do something like this:

function spawnBackgroundProcess($sProcessLine)
{
    $aPipes = array();

    $rProcess = proc_open($sProcessLine, array(), $aPipes);
    proc_close($rProcess);
}

Really that’s abusing the proc_* family, but it’s the best way sadly.

(Don’t forget the &!)