Running complicated ROS shell command through php

Question

I'm trying to run a ROS shell program on the server through php on Ubuntu 14.04. I have tried using system, exec, shell_exec but nothing happens and I don't get any output. The system call is the following:

echo shell_exec("/opt/ros/indigo/bin/rosrun gazebo_ros spawn_model -database Part_A -gazebo -model Part_A");

What are the limitations of using system or exec to run any shell command through php on a server?

I don't care as much about the output of the command as for its execution. I think the problem has to do with the fact that PHP doesn't have any PATH like shell does so it can't find any applications without specifying the exact location. How can I make PHP se the same PATH shell does?

Answer 1

The problem was that the apache user and the environment in which the bash commands are running are not set up correctly. I followed the instructions from this answer but instead of using "source" I used "." and instead of using the source.bash file I used the source.sh file. I also set all the environment variables that had to do with ros or gazebo using the putenv() function.