Run a shell script with an html button

bashhtmlshell

I want to launch a bash script when a button is pressed on a website.
This is my first attempt:

<button type="button" onclick="/path/to/name.sh">Click Me!</button>

But no luck. Any suggestions?

EDIT- Following slhclk's and mit's advice:

I have a php file in /var/www that I point my web-browser to.
The contents of the file is as follows:

<?php
exec("/home/aa/scripts/test.sh");
?>

tesh.sh contains this:

screen -S server1 -X quit

If I type /home/aa/scripts/test.sh in shell, the script is able to execute.
However, when I point my web-browser to http://example.com/screen.php (which has the code above), I see a blank page and the script hadn't executed. Both have execute permissions. Why doesn't it work?

Best Answer

What you are trying to do is not possible that way.

Note that there are always two sides to that: The client side and the server side. Is the script on the client computer or on the server?

If it's on the client: You as the visitor are only seeing an HTML website. onClickwill only be able to launch JavaScript (or other scripting languages), but not any arbitrary shell script that resides on your computer. HTML scripts only run in the browser and can only do limited things. Most importantly, they can't interact with your computer.

Think about it: How would the browser know how to open the file? Don't you think this would be a security issue as well – a plain website triggering the execution of scripts on a client's computer? What if there was something like onClick('rm -rf /home/user')?

An alternative would be to run a Java applet, if you want code to be executed on the client, but this not exactly the same and it's something really complicated. I don't think it's necessary to explain this in detail.

If the script is on the server: If you want to run a script on the server side and have the user trigger its execution, then you need to use a server side programming language. Just HTML won't do it, because it's more or less a static file. If you want to interact with the server, you could for example use PHP.

It has the exec function to run a command line script that is stored on the web server. So basically, you could write exec('/path/to/name.sh'); and it would run the script on the server.

However, just putting this into onClick is not enough here. If you don't know about PHP and server side web programming yet, you might want to read a few tutorials first and then come back with a more specific question.

If you have a php file with the appropriate exec(...) command, make sure the script has execute permissions set not only for the user but also for the group the web server is in, so in the simplest case just 777.

In case of trouble check for the return value of the script with echo exec(...); to see if there are any errors.

You can also run the script from the command line and not from the browser with php /path/to/file.php.

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