PHP run a non blocking system call

Question

How can I run a non blocking system call in PHP?

The system call will call a streaming service run by a second PHP script.. So my page sits and waits on this call.

My two thoughts on a solution:

1: There exists a native method / parameter to execute a system call by non blocking

2: Run system() on a new C++ program that will then fork itself and run the actual php script, on a sep. thread

Is there a native method of executing system calls in a non blocking manner or do I need to hack around this...

I currently have shell_exec('nohup php /path/to/file.php &') but it still holds

Have you tried also piping stdout and stderr into files or /dev/null? I would think that nohup would handle that, but worth a try. — Corbin
– Corbin, Commented Sep 4, 2011 at 23:13
If i was looking for Crontabs I'd use them. Im running a spawn of background processes that streams tweets into data files, and have a consumer grab them and distribute them on my site. Not interested in relaying a bunch of pings w/ crontab, need open connection. — Atticus
– Atticus, Commented Sep 4, 2011 at 23:34
@Corbin, yes thanks buddy, ended up doing that and it let me move on :) — Atticus
– Atticus, Commented Sep 4, 2011 at 23:35

etuardu · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-04 23:18:53Z

4

From PHP manual:

If a program is started with this function, in order for it to continue running in the background, the output of the program must be redirected to a file or another output stream. Failing to do so will cause PHP to hang until the execution of the program ends.

An example is provided in a comment on the same page (linux based):

If you want to start a php process that continues to run independently from apache (with a different parent pid) use nohub. Example:

exec('nohup php process.php > process.out 2> process.err < /dev/null &');

answered Sep 4, 2011 at 23:18

etuardu

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3 Comments

Atticus Over a year ago

if i dont have a process.out... can i output it into /dev/null then?

etuardu Over a year ago

That line means: put the output (stdout) of nohup php process.php in a file called process.out, its error stream (stderr) in another file called process.err and take the null stream /dev/null as input (stdin). You can find more details about I/O redirection in bash here: tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/io-redirection.html.

rinogo Over a year ago

Note that there is a typo in the quoted text - @all, make sure you use nohup, not nohub.

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