I have two computers. On the first computer I have apache running with all my web code. On the second computer I have large amounts of data stored with a retrieval script (the script usually takes hours to run). I am essentially creating a web UI to access this data without any time delay.

so I call:

exec("bash initial.bash");

this is a driver script that is in my Apache folder. It calls the script on the other computer. calling: ssh otherMachine temp.bash&

this script invokes the data retrieval script on the second computer.

If I call initial.bash in the terminal, everything works smoothly and successfully, but if I call it in my PHP file, then all my commands in initial.bash run, with the exception of ssh otherMachine temp.bash&. I put the & at the end of that, so that temp.bash will run in the background, since it does take a few hours to complete.

I am not sure why the nested script is not running when invoked by Apache. Is there a better alternative than using exec or shell_exec to call a script, which ultimately calls another script. The reason I don't call a script on the second machine directly is because of the time it takes the program to run. Shell_exec does not render the php page until the script is complete.