Is there a way to run a command from website?

FinPat · 12-28-2016, 07:39 AM

Hello

Im trying to make a easy way restart my weather server through a website.
Have apache2 installed so web server is up and running.

Now i would like to execute the following command from a web page:

"sudo weather restart"

It will promt for sudo password.
This is for me to restart from my phone and dont need to open my computer and VNC in to do the restart

R
FinPat

cliffordw · 12-28-2016, 10:16 AM

Hi there,

Technically you can achieve this by:

1. Writing a CGI script to run the command, and
2. Configuring sudo to allow the apache/wwwrun user to run your command without a password

If you do this, you probably want to secure this CGI script in some other way, possibly by at least requiring a password in a web form (checked by the script; different from any other passwords on your server).

Guttorm · 12-28-2016, 11:23 AM

It can be tricky to set up, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can make the server very easy to hack.

If the server is not low on RAM or disk-space, you could install webmin. Then you can manage a lot of things with the browser, including restarting services:

http://www.thehostingnews.com/how-to...th-webmin.html

TenTenths · 12-29-2016, 07:39 AM

Install an SSH client on your phone and just SSH in to the server and do whatever you want. That's how I manage my stuff most of the time. JuiceSSH for Android devices is excellent.

FinPat · 12-30-2016, 12:02 AM

Thank you all for the information.

For me looks i need to stick to the VNC solution.
Dont want to open up to much for hackers.

R
FinPat

hydrurga · 12-30-2016, 04:55 AM

Another option is to get your web site action to simply set a "flag" on the server, whether it be the creation of a file, a timestamp, file contents, database value etc, and then have a program that polls occasionally for the existence of this flag and, when it finds it, restarts the weather server and resets the flag.