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Executing and checking background shell process from PHP

23rd May 2007

Found a nicely illustrated method for running a background shell command from PHP and continuously checking if the process is still running.

Here's sample code without explanations:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

1. function run_in_background($Command, $Priority = 0)
2. {
3.  if($Priority)
4.   $PID = shell_exec("nohup nice -n $Priority $Command 2> /dev/null & echo $!");
5.  else
6.   $PID = shell_exec("nohup $Command 2> /dev/null & echo $!");
7.  return($PID);
8. }
9.  
10. function is_process_running($PID)
11. {
12.  exec("ps $PID", $ProcessState);
13.  return(count($ProcessState)>= 2);
14. }

To run something like hmmsearch from the HMMER package, you’d do this:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

1. echo("Running hmmsearch. . .")
2. $ps = run_in_background("hmmsearch $hmmfile $fastafile> $outfile");
3. while(is_process_running($ps))
4. {
5.  echo(" . ");
6.  ob_flush();flush();
7.  sleep(1);
8. }

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 16:53 and is filed under Links, PHP, Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Executing and checking background shell process from PHP”

1. Joe Says:
   June 24th, 2009 at 9:55

   function is_process_running($PID)
   {
   exec("ps $PID", $ProcessState);
   return(count($ProcessState)>= 2);
   }

   IMO, it is more elegant to check for the exit code instead.

2. Bogdan Says:
   June 24th, 2009 at 10:23

   Joe,

   how would you do that, given the example application above? I see no way of getting exit status from a process which has finished.

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