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Run shell script from web page

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: November 29, 2007]

Q. How do I run a shell script from a web server or a web page under Apache or Lighttpd websever?

A. In order to run a shell script from a web page you need Apache web server configured with cgi access. Apache CGI allows documents/files in cgi-bin directory treated as application and run by server when requested rather than as documents sent to the client.. It means if you put shell script in cgi-bin directory then you are able to execute them from a web page. However, you cannot simply run shell script from a web. You need to send or print the MIME type before outputting data to the web browser from shell script. You need to add following line to script before you get output back to browser:

echo "Content-type: text/html"
echo ""

Here is the script that can displays today's date and other information related to your shell script:

#!/bin/bash
# get today's date
OUTPUT="$(date)"
# You must add following two lines before
# outputting data to the web browser from shell
# script
 echo "Content-type: text/html"
 echo ""
 echo "<html><head><title>Demo</title></head><body>"
 echo "Today is $OUTPUT <br>"
 echo "Current directory is $(pwd) <br>"
 echo "Shell Script name is $0"
 echo "</body></html>"

Save the script in your cgi-bin directory and execute it from web page.

See also:

=> For more examples see how to: Run Linux / UNIX commands from a web page.

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Discussion on This FAQ

  1. madhu3437 Says:

    using shell script
    all servers are running or not in a particular path,if running servers and not running servers result shown in web page (html)

    please help

  2. JAM Says:

    Ahh, thanks for this!
    I’ve been looking to do something like this for a while now

    JAM

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