Running a python script through PHP and redirecting stdout, stderr to file

Question

I have a PHP page that I want it to trigger a python script to run in the background and redirect its stdout and stderr to a file to be read later.

I tried the following:

system('python -u /home/omar/workspace/test/test2.py > /home/omar/workspace/test/testfile &');

This works fine in that the PHP doesn't block and the output is written to the file correctly.

But since this is only stdout, I tried putting &> instead of > :

system('python -u /home/omar/workspace/test/test2.py &> /home/omar/workspace/test/testfile &');

For some reason, this causes the page to block and the output of the python script is shown in the PHP page itself and nothing is written to the file!

Is there is a reason for this blasphemy?

Answer 1

I solved it this way:

system('python -u test2.py > testfile 2>&1 & echo $!');

The last bit is to get the pid of the python instance.