I'm trying to run the following command from a PHP file in a web browser:
exec('festival --tts /var/www/test.txt &');
Unfortunately, nothing happens. I thought of trying 'echo' but there is nothing to return to see if the command is working. I set permissions for test.txt to 777. I also ran the command in a shell and it works just fine - just not when submitted by a PHP script. What am I doing wrong?
Provide the full path to the festival binary, you can find it out on the console with which festival command, then use it in your exec call, like this:
exec('/usr/bin/festival --tts /var/www/test.txt &');
Update:
You need to make sure the folder where you are creating the file has write permission for the user running php which usually is www-data on debian based distros.
If I understand correctly what you're trying to do, you aren't returning the input. The syntax for this is:
exec('command', $output);
where $output is the variable in which the script's output will be stored. Oddly, this output will be returned as an array, so don't forget to implode() it when you're done if you're expecting a string.
Does the festival program print any output? If so, try capturing that. Also check the return value.
exec('/usr/bin/festival --tts /var/www/test.txt &', $output, $return);
Dump the output array, like so:
var_dump($output);
Any non-zero return value usually indicates an error:
echo $return;
$?, at least in Ruby and Perl.