How can I run commands in my system using a website running on my local server?

Question

I set up an Apache server on my system. I want to run commands and files using the website running on my local system. How do I trigger a file running using browser?

What i want to do: I have a file test.py on my computer. I want to run this file triggered by a button on my website.

Answer 1

I fear from the phrasing of your question that you might be unaware of the very substantial security implications. Don't do this lightly on an Internet facing server.

There are a few ways of doing this. The "Apache level" way is to set up "cgi" functionality in Apache. One way to do this us to add a stanza like below to your Apache config:

<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
    AllowOverride None
    Options +ExecCGI
    AddHandler cgi-script .py
    Require all granted
</Directory>

The above will allow you to run files ending in .pl scripts which exist in /var/www/cgi-bin

A simpler way would be to do some kind of shell call from PHP if that is configured (a command like shell_exec or similar would do it.)