PhantomJS hanging when called from CLI or Web

I'm trying to use phantomJS to capture a screenshot of a URL, however when I call phantomJS (from either the command line or web app) it hangs and seesm to never execute the "exit()" call. I can't seem to find any error messages and it remains running until I kill it. This is the JS file that is passed to the phantomjs command:

var page = require('webpage').create();
var system = require('system');
var script_address = '';
var page_to_load = '';
var members_id = '';
var activities_id = '';
var folder_path = '';

if (system.args.length < 5) 
{
    console.log('Usage: phantom_activity_fax.js script_address page_to_load members_id activities_id folder_path');
    console.log('#Args: '+system.args.length);
    phantom.exit();
}//END IF SYSTEM.ARGS.LENGTH === 1

//ASSIGN OUR ARGUMENTS RECIEVED
script_address = system.args[0];
page_to_load = system.args[1];
members_id = system.args[2];
activities_id = system.args[3];
folder_path = system.args[4];

console.log(system.args[0]);
console.log(system.args[1]);
console.log(system.args[2]);
console.log(system.args[3]);
console.log(system.args[4]);

//OPEN OUR PAGE WITH THE VALUES PROVIDED
page.open(page_to_load, function () {
    console.log("Entering Anonymous Function, Beginning RENDER:\n");
    page.render(folder_path+members_id+'_'+activities_id+'.png');
    phantom.exit();
});

I see the values pushed to the console, but after that it just hangs :( I've tried the web inspector, but could not understand where to execute the __run() call, and didn't see any change when I added the debugger-autorun=yes to the call :(.

This is the output I get from the command line when it hangs (as root user):

[root@wv-wellvibe2 faxes]# phantomjs /var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/javascripts/phantom_activity_fax.js https://wv-wellvibe2-test/manual_scripts/phantom_js_test_page.php 397 0 /var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/uploads/images/faxes/
/var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/javascripts/phantom_activity_fax.js
https://wv-wellvibe2-test/manual_scripts/phantom_js_test_page.php
397
0
/var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/uploads/images/faxes/

And this is the output I get when running it as my own user, but I don't see the image file in the designated folder (faxes):

[user@wv-wellvibe2 ~]$ phantomjs /var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/javascripts/phantom_activity_fax.js https://wv-wellvibe2-test/manual_scripts/phantom_js_test_page.php 397 0 /var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/uploads/images/faxes/
/var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/javascripts/phantom_activity_fax.js
https://wv-wellvibe2-test/manual_scripts/phantom_js_test_page.php
397
0
/var/www/wv-wellvibe2-test/uploads/images/faxes/
Entering Anonymous Function, Beginning RENDER:
[user@wv-wellvibe2 ~]$

Unfortunately, as I said, the command completed but did not save a .png in the faxes folder. Here is the permissions for that folder:

[root@wv-wellvibe2 faxes]# ls -la
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 root   apache 4096 May 16 15:31 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 apache apache 4096 May 16 14:14 ..
drwxr-xr-x 6 apache apache 4096 May 20 15:05 .svn

Please let me know if there is anything else I can provide! Thank you!

(As requested here is the PHP script that calls the Phantom JS process)

header("Date: " . date('Y-m-d H:i:s'));
//GET THE SMARTY CONFIG
include_once $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/smarty/configs/config.php";

//VARS USED LATER
$process_script = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/javascripts/phantom_activity_fax.js';
$page_to_load = 'https://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/manual_scripts/phantom_js_test_page.php';
$members_id = $_SESSION['members_id'];
$activities_id = 0;
$folder_path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . 'uploads/images/faxes/';
$system_response = '';


$call = "phantomjs --remote-debugger-port=65534 --remote-debugger-autorun=yes " .  $process_script . " " . $page_to_load . " " . $members_id . " " . $activities_id . " " . $folder_path;

echo 'CallingSystemWith: ' . $call . '<br />';

try 
{
    $system_response = system($call);

    echo '<br />SystemResponse: ' . $system_response . '<hr />';
} catch (Exception $exc) {
    echo $exc->getTraceAsString();
}//END TRY / CATCH

(The page it tells PhantomJS to "scrape" is a simple PHP script that outtputs a print_r() of $_SESSION and $_REQUEST)

Solution

If something goes wrong in your script (such as in page.render), phantom.exit() will never be called. That's why phantomJs seems to hang.

Maybe there is an issue in page.render but I don't think so. The most common causes of hangs are unhandled exception.

I will suggest you 4 things to investigate the issue :

add an handler to phantom.onError and/or to page.onError
encapsulate your code in try/catch blocks (such as for page.render)
Once the page is loaded, there is no test on callback status. It's better to check the status
seems to freeze when calling page.render. Have you tried a simpler filename in the current directory ? Maybe the freeze is because of the security or invalid filename (invalid characters ?)

Hope this will help you