python check_output prints but doesn't store in var - python

I usually use very simply subprocess.check_output:
process = subprocess.check_output("ps aux", shell=True)
print process #display the list of process
If I fear there is something in stderr, I use it like that:
process = subprocess.check_output("ps aux 2> /dev/null", shell=True)
print process #display the list of process
But I have a problem with nginx -V:
modules = subprocess.check_output("nginx -V", shell=True) #display the result
print modules #empty
modules = subprocess.check_output("nginx -V 2> /dev/null", shell=True) #display nothing
print modules #empty
Why is the command nginx -V behaving differently (all printing in stderr)? How can I design esealy a workaround with ``subprocess.check_output`?

The way to redirect standard error to standard output in the shell is 2>&1 but you would do well to avoid using the shell at all here.
p = subprocess.Popen(['nginx', '-V'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
if out == '':
modules = err
modules = out
If you have a more recent Python, also consider switching to subprocess.run()

Related

Run cmd file using python

I have a cmd file "file.cmd" containing 100s of lines of command.
Example
pandoc --extract-media -f docx -t gfm "sample1.docx" -o "sample1.md"
pandoc --extract-media -f docx -t gfm "sample2.docx" -o "sample2.md"
pandoc --extract-media -f docx -t gfm "sample3.docx" -o "sample3.md"
I am trying to run these commands using a script so that I don't have to go to a file and click on it.
This is my code, and it results in no output:
file1 = open('example.cmd', 'r')
Lines = file1.readlines()
# print(Lines)
for i in Lines:
print(i)
os.system(i)
You don't need to read the cmd file line by line. you can simply try the following:
import os
os.system('myfile.cmd')
or using the subprocess module:
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(['myfile.cmd'], shell = True, close_fds = True)
stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()
Example:
myfile.cmd:
#ECHO OFF
ECHO Grettings From Python!
PAUSE
script.py:
import os
os.system('myfile.cmd')
The cmd will open with:
Greetings From Python!
Press any key to continue ...
You can debug the issue by knowing the return exit code by:
import os
return_code=os.system('myfile.cmd')
assert return_code == 0 #asserts that the return code is 0 indicating success!
Note: os.system works by calling system() in C can only take up to 65533 arguments after a command (so it is a 16 bit issue). Giving one more argument will result in the return code 32512 (which implies the exit code 127).
The subprocess module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results; using that module is preferable to using this function (os.system('command')).
since it is a command file (cmd), and only the shell can run it, then shell argument must set to be true. since you are setting the shell argument to true, the command needs to be string form and not a list.
use the Popen method for spawn a new process and the communicte for waiting on that process (you can time it out as well). if you whish to communicate with the child process, provide the PIPES (see mu example, but you dont have to!)
the code below for python 3.3 and beyond
import subprocess
try:
proc=subprocess.Popen('myfile.cmd', shell=True, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
outs, errs = proc.communicate(timeout=15) #timing out the execution, just if you want, you dont have to!
except TimeoutExpired:
proc.kill()
outs, errs = proc.communicate()
for older python versions
proc = subprocess.Popen('myfile.cmd', shell=True)
t=10
while proc.poll() is None and t >= 0:
print('Still waiting')
time.sleep(1)
t -= 1
proc.kill()
In both cases (python versions) if you dont need the timeout feature and you dont need to interact with the child process, then just, use:
proc = subprocess.Popen('myfile.cmd', shell=True)
proc.communicate()

How to get the output from executing shell commands in Python

I am trying to execute this shell command using python
but the problem is, it doesn't give the output even if there is a wrong or not:
This is what I have tried:
get_ns_p1 = subprocess.Popen(['kubectl', 'get', 'ns'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
get_ns_p2 = subprocess.Popen(["grep", "-E", "\'(^|\s)"+NAMESPACE+"($|\s)\'"], stdin=get_ns_p1.stdout, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
get_ns_p1.stdout.close() # Allow proc1 to receive a SIGPIPE if proc2 exits.
out_ns, err = get_ns_p2.communicate()
print("output: " + out_ns)
print("error: " + err)
The output looks like:
output:
error:
but in the terminal itseld, it shows an output like this:
Error from server (AlreadyExists): namespaces "namespace-tests" already exists
how can I this error to my err variable?
Your code works correctly; the problem is that you are attempting to capture a string which is emitted on stderr if kubectl is at all correctly written.
However, running grep as a separate subprocess is quite inefficient and unnecessary anyway; Python itself features a much more featureful and complete regular expression engine in the re library which also lets you avoid the overhead of starting a separate process.
import re
r = re.compile(r'(?:^|\s){}(?:\s|$)'.format(NAMESPACE))
kube = subprocess.run(['kubectl', 'get', 'ns'], text=True, capture_output=True)
e = []
for line in kube.stderr.split('\n'):
if r.search(err):
e.append(line)
err = '\n'.join(line)
If you are confined to an older version of Python which doesn't have subprocess.run(), you have to reimplement it, poorly.
p = subprocess.Popen(['kubectl', 'get', 'ns'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out_ns, err = p.communicate()
e = []
for line in err.split('\n'):
...
This has a number of flaws and drawbacks; you really should be thinking seriously about upgrading to Python 3.5+.

Redirecting shell command output to a file does not work using subprocess.Popen in Python

I am using Python 2.6.6 and failed to re-direct the Beeline(Hive) SQL query output returning multiple rows to a file on Unix using ">". For simplicity's sake, I replaced the SQL query with simple "ls" command on current directory and outputting to a text file.
Please ignore syntax of function sendfile. I want help to tweak the function "callcmd" to pipe the stdout onto the text file.
def callcmd(cmd, shl):
logging.info('> '+' '.join(map(str,cmd)))
#return 0;
start_time = time.time()
command_process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=shl, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, universal_newlines=True)
command_output = command_process.communicate()[0]
logging.info(command_output)
elapsed_time = time.time() - start_time
logging.info(time.strftime("%H:%M:%S",time.gmtime(elapsed_time))+' = time to complete (hh:mm:ss)')
if (command_process.returncode != 0):
logging.error('ERROR ON COMMAND: '+' '.join(map(str,cmd)))
logging.error('ERROR CODE: '+str(ret_code))
return command_process.returncode
cmd=['ls', ' >', '/home/input/xyz.txt']
ret_code = callcmd(cmd, False)
Your command (i.e. cmd) could be ['sh', '-c', 'ls > ~/xyz.txt']. That would mean that the output of ls is never passed to Python, it happens entirely in the spawned shell – so you can't log the output. In that case, I'd have used return_code = subprocess.call(cmd), no need for Popen and communicate.
Equivalently, assuming you use bash or similar, you can simply use
subprocess.call('ls > ~/test.txt', shell=True)
If you want to access the output, e.g. for logging, you could use
s = subprocess.check_output(['ls'])
and then write that to a file like you would regularly in Python. To check for a non-zero exit code, handle the CalledProcessError that is raised in such cases.
Here the stdout in command_output is written to a file. You don't need to use any redirection although an alternative might be to have the python print to stdout, and then you would redirect that in your shell to a file.
#!/usr/bin/python
import subprocess
cmd=['ls']
command_process = subprocess.Popen(
cmd,
shell='/bin/bash',
stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
universal_newlines=True
)
command_output = command_process.communicate()[0]
if (command_process.returncode != 0):
logging.error('ERROR ON COMMAND: '+' '.join(map(str,cmd)))
logging.error('ERROR CODE: '+str(ret_code))
f = open('listing.txt','w')
f.write(command_output)
f.close()
I added this piece of code to my code and It works fine.Thanks to #Snohdo
f = open('listing.txt','w')
f.write(command_output)
f.close()

Capturing *all* terminal output of a program called from Python

I have a program which can be execute as
./install.sh
This install bunch of stuff and has quite a lot of activity happening on screen..
Now, I am trying to execute it via
p = subprocess.Popen(executable, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
With the hope that all the activity happening on the screen is captured in out (or err). However, content is printed directly to the terminal while the process is running, and not captured into out or err, which are both empty after the process is run.
What could be happening here? How can this content be captured?
In general, what you're doing is already sufficient to channel all output to your variables.
One exception to that is if the program you're running is using /dev/tty to connect directly to its controlling terminal, and emitting output through that terminal rather than through stdout (FD 1) and stderr (FD 2). This is commonly done for security-sensitive IO such as password prompts, but rarely seen otherwise.
As a demonstration that this works, you can copy-and-paste the following into a Python shell exactly as given:
import subprocess
executable = ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'echo stdout; echo stderr >&2']
p = subprocess.Popen(executable, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
print "---"
print "output: ", out
print "stderr: ", err
...by contrast, for a demonstration of the case that doesn't work:
import subprocess
executable = ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'echo uncapturable >/dev/tty']
p = subprocess.Popen(executable, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
print "---"
print "output: ", out
In this case, content is written to the TTY directly, not to stdout or stderr. This content cannot be captured without using a program (such as script or expect) that provides a fake TTY. So, to use script:
import subprocess
executable = ['script', '-q', '/dev/null',
'/bin/sh', '-c', 'echo uncapturable >/dev/tty']
p = subprocess.Popen(executable, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
print "---"
print "output: ", out

catching stdout in realtime from subprocess

I want to subprocess.Popen() rsync.exe in Windows, and print the stdout in Python.
My code works, but it doesn't catch the progress until a file transfer is done! I want to print the progress for each file in real time.
Using Python 3.1 now since I heard it should be better at handling IO.
import subprocess, time, os, sys
cmd = "rsync.exe -vaz -P source/ dest/"
p, line = True, 'start'
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
shell=True,
bufsize=64,
stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in p.stdout:
print(">>> " + str(line.rstrip()))
p.stdout.flush()
Some rules of thumb for subprocess.
Never use shell=True. It needlessly invokes an extra shell process to call your program.
When calling processes, arguments are passed around as lists. sys.argv in python is a list, and so is argv in C. So you pass a list to Popen to call subprocesses, not a string.
Don't redirect stderr to a PIPE when you're not reading it.
Don't redirect stdin when you're not writing to it.
Example:
import subprocess, time, os, sys
cmd = ["rsync.exe", "-vaz", "-P", "source/" ,"dest/"]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
print(">>> " + line.rstrip())
That said, it is probable that rsync buffers its output when it detects that it is connected to a pipe instead of a terminal. This is the default behavior - when connected to a pipe, programs must explicitly flush stdout for realtime results, otherwise standard C library will buffer.
To test for that, try running this instead:
cmd = [sys.executable, 'test_out.py']
and create a test_out.py file with the contents:
import sys
import time
print ("Hello")
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(10)
print ("World")
Executing that subprocess should give you "Hello" and wait 10 seconds before giving "World". If that happens with the python code above and not with rsync, that means rsync itself is buffering output, so you are out of luck.
A solution would be to connect direct to a pty, using something like pexpect.
I know this is an old topic, but there is a solution now. Call the rsync with option --outbuf=L. Example:
cmd=['rsync', '-arzv','--backup','--outbuf=L','source/','dest']
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in iter(p.stdout.readline, b''):
print '>>> {}'.format(line.rstrip())
Depending on the use case, you might also want to disable the buffering in the subprocess itself.
If the subprocess will be a Python process, you could do this before the call:
os.environ["PYTHONUNBUFFERED"] = "1"
Or alternatively pass this in the env argument to Popen.
Otherwise, if you are on Linux/Unix, you can use the stdbuf tool. E.g. like:
cmd = ["stdbuf", "-oL"] + cmd
See also here about stdbuf or other options.
On Linux, I had the same problem of getting rid of the buffering. I finally used "stdbuf -o0" (or, unbuffer from expect) to get rid of the PIPE buffering.
proc = Popen(['stdbuf', '-o0'] + cmd, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
stdout = proc.stdout
I could then use select.select on stdout.
See also https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/25372/
for line in p.stdout:
...
always blocks until the next line-feed.
For "real-time" behaviour you have to do something like this:
while True:
inchar = p.stdout.read(1)
if inchar: #neither empty string nor None
print(str(inchar), end='') #or end=None to flush immediately
else:
print('') #flush for implicit line-buffering
break
The while-loop is left when the child process closes its stdout or exits.
read()/read(-1) would block until the child process closed its stdout or exited.
Your problem is:
for line in p.stdout:
print(">>> " + str(line.rstrip()))
p.stdout.flush()
the iterator itself has extra buffering.
Try doing like this:
while True:
line = p.stdout.readline()
if not line:
break
print line
You cannot get stdout to print unbuffered to a pipe (unless you can rewrite the program that prints to stdout), so here is my solution:
Redirect stdout to sterr, which is not buffered. '<cmd> 1>&2' should do it. Open the process as follows: myproc = subprocess.Popen('<cmd> 1>&2', stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
You cannot distinguish from stdout or stderr, but you get all output immediately.
Hope this helps anyone tackling this problem.
To avoid caching of output you might wanna try pexpect,
child = pexpect.spawn(launchcmd,args,timeout=None)
while True:
try:
child.expect('\n')
print(child.before)
except pexpect.EOF:
break
PS : I know this question is pretty old, still providing the solution which worked for me.
PPS: got this answer from another question
p = subprocess.Popen(command,
bufsize=0,
universal_newlines=True)
I am writing a GUI for rsync in python, and have the same probelms. This problem has troubled me for several days until i find this in pyDoc.
If universal_newlines is True, the file objects stdout and stderr are opened as text files in universal newlines mode. Lines may be terminated by any of '\n', the Unix end-of-line convention, '\r', the old Macintosh convention or '\r\n', the Windows convention. All of these external representations are seen as '\n' by the Python program.
It seems that rsync will output '\r' when translate is going on.
if you run something like this in a thread and save the ffmpeg_time property in a property of a method so you can access it, it would work very nice
I get outputs like this:
output be like if you use threading in tkinter
input = 'path/input_file.mp4'
output = 'path/input_file.mp4'
command = "ffmpeg -y -v quiet -stats -i \"" + str(input) + "\" -metadata title=\"#alaa_sanatisharif\" -preset ultrafast -vcodec copy -r 50 -vsync 1 -async 1 \"" + output + "\""
process = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, universal_newlines=True, shell=True)
for line in self.process.stdout:
reg = re.search('\d\d:\d\d:\d\d', line)
ffmpeg_time = reg.group(0) if reg else ''
print(ffmpeg_time)
Change the stdout from the rsync process to be unbuffered.
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd,
shell=True,
bufsize=0, # 0=unbuffered, 1=line-buffered, else buffer-size
stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
I've noticed that there is no mention of using a temporary file as intermediate. The following gets around the buffering issues by outputting to a temporary file and allows you to parse the data coming from rsync without connecting to a pty. I tested the following on a linux box, and the output of rsync tends to differ across platforms, so the regular expressions to parse the output may vary:
import subprocess, time, tempfile, re
pipe_output, file_name = tempfile.TemporaryFile()
cmd = ["rsync", "-vaz", "-P", "/src/" ,"/dest"]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=pipe_output,
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
while p.poll() is None:
# p.poll() returns None while the program is still running
# sleep for 1 second
time.sleep(1)
last_line = open(file_name).readlines()
# it's possible that it hasn't output yet, so continue
if len(last_line) == 0: continue
last_line = last_line[-1]
# Matching to "[bytes downloaded] number% [speed] number:number:number"
match_it = re.match(".* ([0-9]*)%.* ([0-9]*:[0-9]*:[0-9]*).*", last_line)
if not match_it: continue
# in this case, the percentage is stored in match_it.group(1),
# time in match_it.group(2). We could do something with it here...
In Python 3, here's a solution, which takes a command off the command line and delivers real-time nicely decoded strings as they are received.
Receiver (receiver.py):
import subprocess
import sys
cmd = sys.argv[1:]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in p.stdout:
print("received: {}".format(line.rstrip().decode("utf-8")))
Example simple program that could generate real-time output (dummy_out.py):
import time
import sys
for i in range(5):
print("hello {}".format(i))
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(1)
Output:
$python receiver.py python dummy_out.py
received: hello 0
received: hello 1
received: hello 2
received: hello 3
received: hello 4

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