mjhjmtu

I have a websocket server written in Node. The following instruction, when executed from the command line starts the websocket server successfully:

nohup "/root/.nvm/versions/node/v8.11.1/bin/node" "/var/www/bm-server/bm-server" 1337 > "/var/www/bm-server/logs.txt" 2>&1 &

I can see that the server is running because pgrep -x "bm-server" displayes the PID.

I know the port is open and listening because # netstat -an | grep ":1337" produces:

tcp6 0 0 :::1337 :::* LISTEN

I know the port is accessible because telnet myhost 1337 successfully connects from another machine.

And my web app can connect to and use the server as expected.

The problem is that I want to start the program via PHP:

exec('nohup "/root/.nvm/versions/node/v8.11.1/bin/node" "/var/www/bm-server/bm-server" 1337 > "/var/www/bm-server/logs.txt" 2>&1 &', $stdout, $exitcode);

That command, when run from PHP passes all the same tests as above, except when connecting from the browser. I can connect with telnet just fine, but when I try to connect from the browser I get failed: Error in connection establishment: net::ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED

It has to have something to do with the environment in which PHP executes the code. I can't figure out what could possibly be affected by that in the script though.

Here's the source for the server, if it mattters.

What is the problem with the PHP user (www-data) starting the server? BTW I also gave www-data permission to run sudo without a password and tried it with sudo as well, but that didn't make a difference.