# Cannot get exec in php working help?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/cannot-get-exec-in-php-working-help/256567>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [April 4, 2008, 3:44am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/cannot-get-exec-in-php-working-help/256567 "2008-04-04T03:44:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Gixm87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ac91a4/32.png) [@Gixm87](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Gixm87)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:44am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/cannot-get-exec-in-php-working-help/256567/1 "2008-04-04T03:44:39Z")

</div>

Hey guys I am having a problem. Right now I am running my own fedora 8 test server with the latest apache php ispconfig ffmpeg with all libraries and pretty much anything else you could think of that a web server would have like mail.

Anyways thats my system, my problem is I cannot do anything with the command exec(). I am not running in safe mode or anything. I tried moving a link to the program i want to execute into my web folder so that i was sure that its not the URL within my system that is messing it up.

things i have tried is mkdir within my web folder and i tried to exec ffmpeg on a video because what i am trying to do is server side video conversions.  
My code for this is.

```php
$cmd = 'ffmpeg -i Tool - VICARIOUS.avi -b 96k -r 18 -s cif -ra 44100 Tool3.flv > test.txt'
$output = exec($cmd, $error);

```

Now there is nothing in test.txt and there is no tool3 file within the entire filesystem. I also tried this

```php
$output = exec('ffmpeg -i Tool - VICARIOUS.avi -b 96k -r 18 -s cif -ra 44100 Tool3.flv > test.txt', $error);

```

AND this

```php
exec('ffmpeg -i Tool - VICARIOUS.avi -b 96k -r 18 -s cif -ra 44100 Tool3.flv', $error);

```

Nothing seems to work.

I also tried using shell\_exec but that did not work aswell. If you guys could give me any pointers as to where or what i might check to get this working i would GREATLY appreciate it  
Thanks.