It's a simple problem. When you are running from terminal, you are running the php file from terminal as a privileged user. When you go to the php from your web browser, the php script is being run as the web server user which does not have permissions to execute files in your home directory. In Ubuntu, the www-data user is the apache web server user. If you're on ubuntu you would have to do the following: chown yourusername:www-data /home/testuser/testscript chmod g+x /home/testuser/testscript
what the above does is transfers user ownership of the file to you, and gives the webserver group ownership of it. the next command gives the group executable permission to the file. Now the next time you go ahead and do it from the browser, it should work.