Question

I can’t find any question exactly like this. If I’m wrong please point me to the right answer about this.

I have the following situation:

I need to run a script in the cron job (no problem), the problem is in my script, something is wrong, ’cause the script is not running properly.

NOT WORKING SCRIPT

<?php

$command = 'mysql -u root -h localhost eephi < C:/wamp/www/file-20110817-0200.sql';
system( $command );

?>

The most weird is, the command -> mysql -u root -h localhost eephi < C:/wamp/www/file-20110817-0200.sql when executed is a shell, works perfect, no errors, everything run fine. But when I call the command in a php script like is showed above it is not working, no errors, no warnings, nothing is outputed.

I have another script doing something similar, but not the same, but the idea is the same.. and it works fine.

WORKING SCRIPT

$command = 'mysqldump -u user -p****** -h myhost.com mytable > /home/user/www/backup/file-20110817-0200.sql';
system( $command );

?>

Then what is the difference between the two scripts? one works fine and another one not.. WEIRD to me. I hope I can find a solution here. Thanks anyway for your time.

Answer 1

Probably a path error – executing things from within PHP has a different environment than from the command line. You’ll probably have to provide a full path to mysql in your exec (e.g. /usr/local/bin/mysql ...)

You can capture the shell’s error messages by appending 2>&1 to the end of the command. This’ll redirect stderr to stdout so PHP sees the error messages as part of the command’s output.