note 20468 deleted from ref.exec by goba

For those who want to execute a .php script to run in the background, from a .php web page... exec("php script.php parameters 2>dev/null >&- <&- >/dev/null &"); Where... - php is the path to your php script executer (php has to be specifically complied to be to do this) - script.php is the script - parameters are none or more parameters - 2>dev/null redirects the stderr to a file - <&- switches off the stdin - >&- switches off the stdout - >dev/null redirects all other output to the file dev/null - & direct script to run in background This is the only way I managed to get it working (Linux & Apache, php 4x enviroment) . What is also great is that the process is forked so even though a user may close the browser that initiated the exec(), the process will still run to completion. And the dev/null file can be turned into a log. What I found odd is that the script I was execing would run fine in the bg when executed from the command line, but not from the browser until I closed the stdin and stdout. Any insight into this?