I'm doing this simple thing
import subprocess
with cd("/home/myuserid"):
subprocess.call("ls ")
where cd is taken from here and it just does not work (same with any other path):
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
You have an extra space after ls, which is causing your issue. Remove that and it should work fine.
import subprocess
with cd("/home/myuserid"):
subprocess.call("ls")
When you use subprocess without shell=True, it interprets the entire string you pass as the command to execute. So it looks for a program literally called "ls " when you provide that extra space, which of course doesn't exist.
If you were to use shell=True, it would work fine even with the extra space, because a /bin/sh shell would be used to run the command, and the shell wouldn't care about the extra space. In general it's safer to use the default of shell=False, though, so I'd stick with that.
Related
For some reason, no matter how many variations I've tried, I can't seem to execute a bash script I've written. The command words 100% fine in Terminal, but when I try calling it with a subprocess, it returns nothing.
from os import listdir
import subprocess
computer_name = 'homedirectoryname'
moviefolder = '/Users/{}/Documents/Programming/Voicer/Movies'.format(computer_name)
string = 'The lion king'
for i in listdir(moviefolder):
title = i.split('.')
formatted_title = title[0].replace(' ', '\ ')
if string.lower() == title[0].lower():
command = 'vlc {}/{}.{}'.format(moviefolder, formatted_title, title[1])
subprocess.call(["/usr/local/bin",'-i','-c', command], stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
else:
continue
The bash executable file looks like this:
#/bin/bash
func() {
open -a /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC $1
}
Where have I gone wrong?
You should call open directly:
import os
import subprocess
computer_name = 'homedirectoryname'
moviefolder = '/Users/{}/Documents/Programming/Voicer/Movies'.format(computer_name)
string = 'The lion king'
for filename in os.listdir(moviefolder):
title = filename.split('.')
if string.lower() == title[0].lower():
subprocess.call(['open', '-a', '/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC', os.path.join(moviefolder, filename)])
Since you are using shell=True, the command must be a string:
On Unix with shell=True, the shell defaults to /bin/sh. If args is a
string, the string specifies the command to execute through the shell.
This means that the string must be formatted exactly as it would be
when typed at the shell prompt. This includes, for example, quoting or
backslash escaping filenames with spaces in them. If args is a
sequence, the first item specifies the command string, and any
additional items will be treated as additional arguments to the shell
itself. (docs)
Like you even mentioned in a comment, you get /usr/local/bin: is a directory when you properly capture the error from the shell (and take out the erroneous shell=True; or correspondingly refactor the command line to be suitable for this usage, i.e. pass a string instead of a list).
Just to spell this out, you are attempting to run the command /usr/local/bin with some options; but of course, it's not a valid command; so this fails.
The actual script you seem to want to run will declare a function and then exit, which results in the function's definition being lost again, because the subprocess which ran the shell in which this function declaration was executed has now terminated and released all its resources back to the system.
Perhaps you should take more than just a few steps back and explain what you actually want to accomplish; but really, that should be a new, separate question.
Assuming you are actually trying to run vlc, and guessing some other things, too, perhaps you actually want
subprocess.call(['vlc','{}/{}.{}'.format(moviefolder, formatted_title, title[1]),
stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
If your PATH is correct, you should not need to specify /usr/local/bin/ explicitly (and if your PATH is wrong, correct it in the code before, instead of hardcoding a directory for the executable you want to call).
/usr/local/bin is a directory. You can't run a directory as if it were a command.
Anyhow, there's no point to having /usr/local/bin anywhere in your command at all. Leave out the shell=True, and explicitly call vlc:
subprocess.call([
'vlc',
'{}/{}.{}'.format(moviefolder, formatted_title, title[1])
])
When shell=True is used in subprocess.call, if the command arguments is a sequence, then the first element of the sequence needs to be the command, and the rest are treated as argument(s) to the shell itself.
So, this should do:
subprocess.call(["/usr/local/bin/{}".format(command), '-i','-c'], shell=True, ...)
Otherwise, you can make the command a string.
Example:
In [20]: subprocess.call(["cat spamegg", "-i", "-c"], shell=True)
foobar
I have a a file structure like the following (Windows):
D:\
dir_1\
batch_1.bat
dir_1a\
batch_2.bat
dir_2\
main.py
For the sake of this question, batch_1.bat simply calls batch_2.bat, and looks like:
cd dir_1a
start batch_2.bat %*
Opening batch_1.bat from a command prompt indeed opens batch_2.bat as it's supposed to, and from there on, everything is golden.
Now I want my Python file, D:\dir_2\main.py, to spawn a new process which starts batch_1.bat, which in turn should start batch_2.bat. So I figured the following Python code should work:
import subprocess
subprocess.Popen(['cd "D:/dir_1"', "start batch_1.bat"], shell=True)
This results in "The system cannot find the path specified" being printed to my Python console. (No error is raised, of course.) This is due to the first command. I get the same result even if I cut it down to:
subprocess.Popen(['cd "D:/"'], shell=True)
I also tried starting the batch file directly, like so:
subprocess.Popen("start D:/dir_1/batch_1.bat", shell=True)
For reasons that I don't entirely get, this seems to just open a windows command prompt, in dir_2.
If I forego the start part of this command, then my Python process is going to end up waiting for batch_1 to finish, which I don't want. But it does get a little further:
subprocess.Popen("D:/dir_1/batch_1.bat", shell=True)
This results in batch_1.bat successfully executing... in dir_2, the directory of the Python script, rather than the directory of batch_1.bat, which results in it not being able to find dir_1a\ and hence, batch_2.bat is not executed at all.
I am left highly confused. What am I doing wrong, and what should I be doing instead?
Your question is answered here: Python specify popen working directory via argument
In a nutshell, just pass an optional cwd argument to Popen:
subprocess.Popen(["batch_1.bat"], shell=True, cwd=r'd:\<your path>\dir1')
I try to setup a cron job to rsync remote files (contains root-level files) into my local server, if I run the command in shell, it works. But if I run this in Python, I got into strange command not found error:
This works if run it in a shell:
rsync -ave ssh --rsync-path='sudo rsync' --delete root#192.168.1.100:/tmp/test2 ./test
But this Python script doesn't:
#!/usr/bin/python
from subprocess import call
....
for src_dir in backup_list:
call(["rsync", "-ave", "ssh", "--rsync-path='sudo rsync'", "--delete", src_host+src_dir, dst_dir])
It fails with:
local server:$ backup.py
bash: sudo rsync: command not found
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [Receiver]
rsync error: remote command not found (code 127) at io.c(226) [Receiver=3.1.0]
...
It is most likely a spacing error or something small, the way I debug commands is to make sure to prints out. OS.system is a great alternative thats easier although subprocess is better. I am not around my computer to test it but you can either set your subprocess like that, or use this example. This is assuming your on Linux or Mac.
import os
cmd = ('rsync -ave --delete root' +str(src_host) + str(src_directory) + '' + str(dst_dir)) #variable you can call anytime
os.system(cmd) # actually performs the command
print x # how to test and make sure
Quotes around an argument with spaces like you have in "--rsync-path='sudo rsync'" are needed when the shell splits up a long string into arguments, to avoid treating rsync as a separate argument. In your call(), you're providing the individual arguments, so that splitting of a string into arguments is not performed. With your code as-is, the quotes end up as part of the argument passed to rsync. Just drop them. Here's a working example of the list passed to a call() for a very similar rsync invocation:
['rsync',
'-arvz',
'-delete',
'-e',
'ssh',
'--rsync-path=sudo rsync',
'192.168.0.17:/remote/directory/',
'/local/directory/']
I have been facing the same issue:
This piece of code work for me…
join the command while passing to call or Popen and add shell=True.
from subprocess import call
for src_dir in backup_list:
call( " ".join(["rsync", "-ave", "ssh", "--rsync-path='sudo rsync'", "--delete", src_host+src_dir, dst_dir]) , shell=True)
I was trying to use subprocess calls to perform a copy operation (code below):
import subprocess
pr1 = subprocess.call(['cp','-r','./testdir1/*','./testdir2/'], shell = True)
and I got an error saying:
cp: missing file operand
Try `cp --help' for more information.
When I try with shell=False , I get
cp: cannot stat `./testdir1/*': No such file or directory
How do I get around this problem?
I'm using RedHat Linux GNOME Deskop version 2.16.0 and bash shell and Python 2.6
P.S. I read the question posted in Problems with issuing cp command with Popen in Python, and it suggested using shell = True option, which is not working for me as I mentioned :(
When using shell=True, pass a string, not a list to subprocess.call:
subprocess.call('cp -r ./testdir1/* ./testdir2/', shell=True)
The docs say:
On Unix with shell=True, the shell defaults to /bin/sh. If args is a
string, the string specifies the command to execute through the shell.
This means that the string must be formatted exactly as it would be
when typed at the shell prompt. This includes, for example, quoting or
backslash escaping filenames with spaces in them. If args is a
sequence, the first item specifies the command string, and any
additional items will be treated as additional arguments to the shell
itself.
So (on Unix), when a list is passed to subprocess.Popen (or subprocess.call), the first element of the list is interpreted as the command, all the other elements in the list are interpreted as arguments for the shell. Since in your case you do not need to pass arguments to the shell, you can just pass a string as the first argument.
This is an old thread now, but I was just having the same problem.
The problem you were having with this call:
subprocess.call(['cp','-r','./testdir1/*','./testdir2/'], shell = False)
was that each of the parameters after the first one are quoted. So to the shell sees the command like this:
cp '-r' './testdir1/*' './testdir2/'
The problem with that is the wildcard character (*). The filesystem looks for a file with the literal name '*' in the testdir1 directory, which of course, is not there.
The solution is to make the call like the selected answer using the shell = True option and none of the parameters quoted.
I know that the option of shell=True may be tempting but it's always inadvisable due to security issues. Instead, you can use a combination of the subprocess and glob modules.
For Python 3.5 or higher:
import subprocess
import glob
subprocess.run(['cp', '-r'] + glob.glob('./testdir1/*') + ['./testdir2/'])
For Python 3.4 or lower:
import subprocess
import glob
subprocess.call(['cp', '-r'] + glob.glob('./testdir1/*') + ['./testdir2/'])
In my Python script, this line:
call("/Applications/BitRock\\ InstallBuilder\\ for\\ Qt\\ 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh")
will fail every time with the error OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
However, if I write out the result of that string:
sys.stdout.write("/Applications/BitRock\\ InstallBuilder\\ for\\ Qt\\ 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh")
I get:
/Applications/BitRock\ InstallBuilder\ for\ Qt\ 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh
If I put that directly into the terminal, it works perfect.
What am I missing?
By default subprocess.call uses no shell (shell=False). Therefore, there's no need to escape the spaces. The space escaping is needed in shells (because shells need to know what's the binary's name and what the arguments). Therefore the following uses are all correct (and similar):
Without spawning a shell that spawns the subprocess (favorable):
from subprocess import call
call('/Applications/BitRock InstallBuilder for Qt 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh')
or again without shell (explicit shell=False and the usage of an argument list)
from subprocess import call
call(['/Applications/BitRock InstallBuilder for Qt 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh'],
shell=False)
But when subprocess is told to first of all swawn shell which then spawns the subprocess itself, the spaces have to be escaped, because it's a shell command:
from subprocess import call
call('/Applications/BitRock\\ InstallBuilder\\ for\\ Qt 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh',
shell=True)
An alternative would be to use a shell and quotes:
from subprocess import call
call('"/Applications/BitRock InstallBuilder for Qt 8.5.2/bin/Builder.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh"',
shell=True)
I'd recommend not to use a shell whenever possible (mostly for security reasons), remember though you have to pass the arguments to the command as a list if you're not using a shell.
Either (without shell, favourable):
call(['/bin/echo', 'foo', 'bar'])
or with a shell
call('/bin/echo foo bar', shell=True)
(both calls have the same output (foo bar\n)