You probably need to chdir to the correct directory before calling the script. This way you can ensure what directory your script is "in" before calling the shell command.

$old_path = getcwd();
chdir('/my/path/');
$output = shell_exec('./script.sh var1 var2');
chdir($old_path);

You probably need to chdir to the correct directory before calling the script. This way you can ensure what directory your script is "in" before calling the shell command.

$old_path = getcwd();
chdir('/my/path/');
$output = shell_exec('./script.sh var1 var2');
chdir($old_path);
echo "<pre>$output</pre>";

If you have PHP installed as a command line tool (try issuing php to the terminal and see if it works), your shebang (#!) line needs to look like this:

#!/usr/bin/php

Put that at the top of your script, make it executable (chmod +x myscript.php), and make a Cron job to execute that script (same way you'd execute a bash script).

You can also use php myscript.php.

The problem here is that you are quoting the entiore command you are trying to run as a single variable. As a result, you're not running php with foo.php as an argument but instead are attempting to execute a file called php foo.php. Here's a simpler example to show you what I mean:

$ var1="echo "
$ var2="foo"
$ set -x ## debugging info
var1$var2"
+ 'echo foo'      ### The shell tries to execute both vars as a single command
bash: echo foo: command not found

var1" "$var2"
+ 'echo ' foo     ### The shell tries to execute 'echo ' (echo with a space)
bash: echo foo: command not found  

So, the right way is to remove the space and quote each variable separately:

$ var1="echo"
$ var2="foo"
var1" "$var2"

If you do that though, you'll hit the next error. The . is the source command. That tries to read a shell script and execute it in the current session. You are giving it a php script instead. That won't work, you need to execute it, not source it.

Finally, always avoid using CAPITAL variable names. The shell's reserved variables are capitalized so it's a good idea to always use lower case variable names for your scripts.

Putting all this together (with a few other minor improvements), what you want is something like:

#!/bin/sh

list="/path/to/my/site/dir"
config="/usr/bin/php"

for i in "$list"
do
    "$config" "$i"/test.php
done

You should have problems when you have spaces in the path of the found files.
Try with a while read do ... done loop like:

#!/bin/bash
find /home/ -name "killstat.php"  | while read i
do 
  /usr/bin/php -f "$i";
done

Note the double quotes " in /usr/bin/php -f "$i";

In case your script needs to run from his place

#!/bin/bash
find /home/ -name "killstat.php"  | while read i
do 
  Cdir=$(dirname "$i")
  Cname=$(basename "$i")     # This line can be avoided...
  cd "$Cdir"
  /usr/bin/php -f "$Cname";  # ...if here you use killstat.php [1]
  cd -
done

Note again the double quote for $i just in case you have spaces in the string of directory.
The double are not really needed for $Cname since you know that, in this case, is killstat.php.
[1] You can put directly killstat.php instead of $Cname and avoid to write all the lines with Cname in the script.

I may be wrong, but I believe that sudoers also restricts parameters that can be passed to a command/script, not just the command itself.

If you try to run your .sh without the parameter it will likely work e.g.

  sudo /bin/bash /var/www/my_bash_script.sh

So, to tell sudoers to allow that script to be run with any parameters (by apache), you would need to adjust the line like so:

  apache ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/var/www/my_bash_script.sh *

The wildcard would allow apache to run that script with any parameters.

You may also need /bin/bash in that line but I'm not certain

  apache ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /bin/bash /var/www/my_bash_script.sh *

If anyone can confirm or refute my understanding of this it would be much appreciated

I would have a directory somewhere called scripts under the WWW folder so that it's not reachable from the web but is reachable by PHP.

e.g. /var/www/scripts/testscript

Make sure the user/group for your testscript is the same as your webfiles. For instance if your client.php is owned by apache:apache, change the bash script to the same user/group using chown. You can find out what your client.php and web files are owned by doing ls -al.

Then run

<?php
      $message=shell_exec("/var/www/scripts/testscript 2>&1");
      print_r($message);
    ?>  

EDIT:

If you really want to run a file as root from a webserver you can try this binary wrapper below. Check out this solution for the same thing you want to do.

Execute root commands via PHP

Passing parameters to a shell script from PHP.

Its all about the "strings", and when to "double quote" for expansion.

<?php

/* exec("/csvexport.sh $table"); */

/* double quote here because you want PHP to expand $table */
/* Escape double quotes so they are passed to the shell because you do not wnat the shell to choke on spaces */
$command_with_parameters = "/path/csvexport.sh \"${table}\"";
$output_from_command = "";
$command_success = "";

/* double quote here because you want PHP to expand $command_with_parameters, a string */
exec("${command_with_parameters}", $output_from_command, $command_success);

/* or to keep it simple */
exec("/path/csvexport.sh \"${table}\"");


/* show me what you got */
echo"${command_success}\n${output_from_command}\n";

?>

BTW: I did not test this snippet.

First, be sure that the shebang is exactly as follow:

#!/bin/bash

Second, be sure that the script is executable using the following command in terminal:

chmod +x /path/to/a.sh

And third, you must to use the full path for the bash script, or in your case, you can use:

$message=exec("$old/a.sh");

And, as an aside note, the following two commands from your php script have no sense:

$old = getcwd();
chdir($old);

They are equivalent with chdir(getcwd()), which change the current directory to ...the current directory, so in fact, nothing happens.

Make your last line:

exec $PHP "$@"

That will run the php binary with the arguments you gave to the script and have it take over the shell script process as well.

If you would like to have your script do other things after executing the php script, drop the exec.