Executing Linux / UNIX commands from web page

by nixCraft on January 5, 2006 · 38 comments· Last updated November 15, 2007

A Web interfaces is almost used by routers and many other sophisticated programs such as webmin. However, why go for a web interface or execute commands from web page? For automation purpose, you need to use a web interfaces. Another advantage is you can access your web-based interface from any computer, running any operating system, anytime in the world :D

In this first part, you will see how to use simple bash (shell) script from web page. In order to execute commands or shell script from a webpage you need:

CGI support with Apache / lighttpd web server.
I'm assuming that you have a properly configured web server.

You need to store program in cgi-bin directory. If you are using Debian Linux default location for cgi-bin directory is /usr/lib/cgi-bin. Under Red Hat / Fedora it is /var/www/cgi-bin. Use text editor such as vi to create a first.cgi program:

$ cd /usr/lib/cgi-bin
$ vi first.cgi

first.cgi code listing:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Content-type: text/html"
echo ""
echo "<html><head><title>Bash as CGI"
echo "</title></head><body>"
echo "<h1>Hello world</h1>"
echo "Today is $(date)"
echo "</body></html>"

Save and close the file. Setup execute permission on the script:

$ chmod +x first.cgi

Fire up your web browser and test the script, for example type url http://localhost/cgi-bin/first.cgi or http://your-ip/cgi-bin/first.cgi

You need to send headers, first three lines are almost same for all your script:

#!/bin/bash : First line tell Linux/UNIX how file first.cgi should be run. So it will use /bin/bash interpreter to execute your rest of program.
echo "Content-type: text/html" : Send html headers, you must include this line.
echo "" : Send a blank line, you must include this line.

Rest is html code. Take a close look at following echo command:

echo "Today is $(date)"

It use shell feature called command substitution. It allows the output of a command to replace the command name:

$(command)

Your bash shell performs the expansion by executing command and replacing the command substitution. So date command get executed by replacing the its output.

Real life example

Here is simple script that collects system information. Create script in cgi-bin directory:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Content-type: text/html"
echo ""
echo "<html><head><title>Bash as CGI"
echo "</title></head><body>"
echo "<h1>General system information for host $(hostname -s)</h1>"
echo ""
echo "<h1>Memory Info</h1>"
echo "<pre> $(free -m) </pre>"
echo "<h1>Disk Info:</h1>"
echo "<pre> $(df -h) </pre>"
echo "<h1>Logged in user</h1>"
echo "<pre> $(w) </pre>"
echo "<center>Information generated on $(date)</center>"
echo "</body></html>"

Save and close the file. Setup execute permission on script:

$ chmod +x script.cgi

Fire up web browser and test it (http://localhost/cgi-bin/script.cgi):

Next time you will see:

How to use and place form elements (from POSTs and GETs)
Cookies in your environment
Use of perl scripting
And finally use of special tools

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{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Randal L. Schwartz January 6, 2006 at 12:25 am

You need to HTML-escape (add ampersands) your command output, or you might be accidentally providing a means for cross-site-scripting attacks.

2 nixcraft January 7, 2006 at 12:44 pm

Randal, thanks, I will cover this later in security issues :) I appreciate your post.

3 007ben January 18, 2006 at 8:42 am

I am struggling with creating a empty file a bash based cgi script. the filename should coome from information passed to the cgi from a forum.
help?

4 nixcraft January 18, 2006 at 9:37 am

007ben, I hope you have write permission to create a empty file.

If you just want to retrieve value pass to url for example http://mydom.com/cgi-bin/script.cgi?filename

Then use $1 in script to get filename i.e.
touch $1

5 nixcraft January 18, 2006 at 9:49 am

So if you are using url
http://mydom.com/cgi-bin/script.cgi?file=/tmp/abc.txt
then following shell code should find out value of file:

LINE=`echo $QUERY_STRING | sed ‘s/&/ /g’`
for i in $LINE
do
f1=$(echo $i | cut -d= -f1)
v1=$(echo $i | cut -d= -f2)
done
echo “Var is f1 and value is $v1″

6 007ben January 18, 2006 at 11:00 am

that last bit was the trick!

the forum was not passing the info with variable name.
and when it did before the script could not pick it up.

THANK YOU!

7 Anonymous February 21, 2006 at 7:11 pm

hello sir.,
I am doing my project in linux.I want to know how to execute useradd and iptables commands in linux from PHP.How can i use the form data as arguments to the program.Please give the solution.
S.Sujaikumar

8 nixcraft February 23, 2006 at 4:09 pm

Use system(), exec() commands. For example to execute ls -l command you can write code:

$out = system(“ls -l”);
echo $out;

Suppose you are using url http://localhost/page.php?user=raj

Then you can use following code to get value of user:
$u = $_GET['user'];
$cmd = “adduser “. $u;
$out = system($cmd);

9 Anonymous August 24, 2006 at 7:03 am

I m doing my project in my university network, which means that I m not the root. Hence I dont have any writtin permissions in cgi-bin directory. Is ther any other way out? I wud be greatfull if you can lemme knw the solution.
thanks a lot
vasanth

10 Jadu November 15, 2007 at 9:21 am

nixcraft is always best :-) Thanks, I am used to BASH, and your helps are always good for me. Is there any doc which tells more about cgi and bash together? like accepting user inputs, database access and all, will be a great help for me.

Thanks,
Jadu, India

11 vivek November 15, 2007 at 12:48 pm

Jadu,

Although bash is handy, it is recommended that you use python or perl for cgi and sys admin related task.

HTH

12 olivier jolly January 9, 2008 at 11:57 am

Hi,
I know this topic is a bit old, but I think it could be useful to alter the comment of nixcraft to be like this :
#!/bin/bash

echo "Content-type: text/plain" echo

LINE=`echo $QUERY_STRING | sed 's/&/ /g'` for i in $LINE do f1=$(echo $i | cut -d= -f1) v1=$(echo $i | cut -d= -f2) typeset -r $f1=$v1 done

echo "hard coded content of t = '$t'"
Like this, you are generating shell variables that you can use when you know in advance their name (as shown in the last line). It still lacks post support and decoding of escaped character but for simple script it can useful.
hth

13 Ravi June 12, 2008 at 4:51 am

Hello,

i want to run a “tail -f ” command using cgi to view unix log files progress in real time from browser.

any ideas? or cgi script can do it?

14 Thor Henrik June 13, 2008 at 12:35 pm

I have writen a bash script for work that accesses sevral servers and collect key information about them and creates a web page with the info.

I would like to be able to run the shell script from the web page.
Just to be able to do ./script.sh $1
Is this possible

15 kwissem June 16, 2008 at 11:02 pm

I want to open konsole and exute telnet 10.10.10.1 and the konsole be opened from web page

16 Princess July 10, 2008 at 11:14 am

I have a bash script here that will create email accounts for each person that will request for 1.

I want this script to be web based is this possible?

Anyone can help me…

Thanks

17 Ratnesh Bajpai February 11, 2009 at 11:24 am

Hello i want to know the way to creating a directory in linux through browser execution using php. thnx in advance

18 mailmado May 2, 2009 at 5:51 am

hello
i want to run a simple mkdir command in cgi script which will take directory name from html page
pl help.

19 Pex May 14, 2009 at 9:13 am

Hello,
I want to install web server with php support. what are the steps to be taken??
This is on Linux!!

Pliz help!!

20 narf October 2, 2009 at 12:36 am

I get this on the /var/log/httpd/error.log
Syntax error in type map, no ‘:’ in /var/www/cgi-bin/script.cgi for header “”\n

21 apctr November 30, 2009 at 8:26 am

i want to execute vncviewer in web page.what should I have to do????????

22 berot3 December 12, 2009 at 7:59 pm

does it work on mac os x?

23 Vivek Gite December 13, 2009 at 8:03 am: Yes, it should work under Mac OS X too
Reply

24 berot3 December 14, 2009 at 4:35 pm

yepp works on mac, just the path of the cgi is different: /Library/Webserver/CGI-Executables/
but thats not what i was looking for :)
maybe u can help me / maybe have heard of someting like this:
i want to execute commands as if i would be a ssh-console but for http, u know what i mean?

25 Vivek Gite December 14, 2009 at 4:52 pm: This is going little offtopic. I suggest you post it to our forum along with shell code if you have any and will continue discussion at our forum http://nixcraft.com/
Reply

26 Guntur January 5, 2010 at 11:55 am

hi, my server is using CentOS.. where to put the cgi?

I don’t understand anything bout cgi..
but I want to execute a bash command from web page..
like mkdir or unzip etc..

please help me :)

thx

27 Ben May 22, 2010 at 11:45 am

Hi,
I was happy to find your information. I was able to add a line to start a linux program, with the right attributes. For developing a script within a webpage with buttons I moved to a Ubuntu PC because I was developing on an embedded linux board.

Since I moved to the Ubuntu system your example still works but the line I placed in your example script does not.

Can you help me out what could be my problem ? If you want to take a look, please send me a message and I will send you my problem.

The command works from the command line in Ubuntu but not from the script…

TnX,
Ben

28 Kirby June 24, 2010 at 6:10 am

Hi nixcraft, thanks for the Post.

I’m very interested in the next topic in line after this. I notice this is really old, and sorry to dig up such an old topic.

But, I’ve looked all over and can not find the next topic: How to use and place form elements (from POSTs and GETs)

Can you please let me know if you ever wrote that one? Thanks!!
I’d really like to read about that… more in dept how to control unix commands from a web page/url.

29 akshaya March 6, 2011 at 3:31 am

child

30 Chris August 31, 2011 at 7:47 pm

Is there a way to execute a Linux command in index.html? Say for instance $HOSTNAME?

31 daniel September 28, 2011 at 8:18 am

Hi this site is just great.. Thumbs up nixcraft

32 goodslave October 16, 2011 at 2:05 pm

I am writing an html page to to display the output of a shell script .
but i need to pass usename & password from html page to shell script

please help me to resolve this problem

33 Sai November 11, 2011 at 1:25 pm

I am trying to execute perl script which accepts a parameter,through Perl CGI as
system(“./remConnect.pl $var”);
print “$? &nbsp”;

$? returns 512. Can you please give a solution to make it run?

Thanks

34 Venky$ November 18, 2011 at 7:24 am

hi..
wat r the websites to run unix commands

35 savy December 16, 2011 at 4:28 am

I Need to download Executing Linux / UNIX commands from web page

36 Aravind December 31, 2011 at 12:26 pm

Whats a CGI ? i am new to this.. Please reply

37 vibin March 8, 2013 at 2:32 pm

My linux command is having a UI output.can i get that into html..

38 leejackee May 11, 2013 at 1:47 pm

Thank you !!! very much my friend it’s a wonderful article.

Executing Linux / UNIX commands from web page

Real life example

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