Develop Reference

Python Script skips process of Shell Script file

I'm trying to automate the deletion of a program with python and shell scripts.
this is the code I use to execute my shell scripts.
import subprocess
self.shellscript = subprocess.Popen([self.shellScriptPath], shell=True, stdin=subprocess.PIPE )
self.shellscript.stdin.write('yes\n'.encode("utf-8"))
self.shellscript.stdin.close()
self.returncode = self.shellscript.wait()
This is the shell script that I want to run.
echo *MY PASSWORD* | sudo -S apt-get --purge remove *PROGRAM*
echo *MY PASSWORD* | sudo -S apt-get autoremove
echo *MY PASSWORD* | sudo -S apt-get clean
I know it's not secure to code my password into it like this but I will fix this later.
My problem is that the commandline asks me to type y/n but the program skips that and nothing happens.

In this particular case, the absolutely simplest fix is to use
apt-get -y ...
and do away with passing input to the command entirely.
In the general case, you want to avoid Popen in every scenario where you can. You are reimplementing subprocess.call() but not doing it completely. Your entire attempt can be reduced to (and fixed with)
self.returncode = subprocess.run(
self.shellScriptPath, input='yes\n', text=True).returncode
Unless the commands in self.shellScriptPath require a shell, probably remove shell=True and, if necessary, shlex.split() the value into a list of tokens (though if it's already a single token, just split it yourself, trivially: [self.shellScriptPath]).

script does not switch to another user

I am working on a script that at a certain point needs to switch to the root user (executing "sudo rootsh" is the only accepted way to switch to root on our servers,) after which it will execute a certain command.
I am not sure what I am missing, but the script simply ignores the part when it should switch to root and continues executing the commands with the user that started the script.
If you check the generated whoami.txt file, you will notice that the user is not root. Please keep in mind that the user executing the script can switch to root without any issue while executing the sudo rootsh command.
Here is the code I am using:
import subprocess
def switch_user():
commands = '''
sudo rootsh
whoami > whoami.txt
sysctl -a | grep kernel.msgmni'''
process = subprocess.Popen('/bin/bash', stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = process.communicate(commands.encode('utf-8'))
switch_user()
Any idea what I am doing wrong? Thanks.

Instead of Popening a subprocess to run bash, and from that opening a separate privileged shell, Popen the command sudo rootsh directly. If that succeeds (requires that the user be permitted to sudo rootsh without providing a password) then deliver the rest of the commands by communicating with the subprocess.
That would be something along these lines:
import subprocess
def switch_user():
# These shell commands will be used as input to the root shell
commands = '''whoami > whoami.txt
sysctl -a | grep kernel.msgmni'''
# Launch the root shell
process = subprocess.Popen('/usr/bin/sudo rootsh',
stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
# Send the shell's input to it and receive back its output
out, err = process.communicate(commands.encode('utf-8'))
switch_user()
You may need to modify that for your purposes. In particular, if your sudo command lives at a different location then you may need to modify the path to it. And I emphasize again that this approach depends on being able to obtain a root shell without providing a password. Sudo can be configured that way, but it is not the default.

I finally managed to make this work after doing a more thorough investigation with the guys from the OS team. I'll post this, maybe it would be useful for somebody in the future:
import os
os.system("sudo rootsh -i -u root 'sysctl -a | grep kernel.msgmni' > parameter_value.txt")
The key was to insert the -i and -u options:
-i [command]
The -i (simulate initial login) option runs the shell specified by the password database entry of the target user as a login
shell.
This means that login-specific resource files such as .profile or .login will be read by the shell. If a command is
specified, it is
passed to the shell for execution via the shell's -c option. If no command is specified, an interactive shell is executed.
sudo
attempts to change to that user's home directory before running the shell. The security policy shall initialize the
environment to a
minimal set of variables, similar to what is present when a user logs in. The Command Environment section in the
sudoers(5) manual documents how the -i option affects the environment in which a command is run when the sudoers policy is in use.
-u user
The -u (user) option causes sudo to run the specified command as a user other than root. To specify a uid instead
of a user name, #uid.
When running commands as a uid, many shells require that the # be escaped with a backslash ('\'). Security policies may
restrict uids
to those listed in the password database. The sudoers policy allows uids that are not in the password database as
long as the targetpw
option is not set. Other security policies may not support this.
Thank you all for your answers :)

Using subprocess to execute shell script with sudo [duplicate]

I'm trying to write a small script to mount a VirtualBox shared folder each time I execute the script. I want to do it with Python, because I'm trying to learn it for scripting.
The problem is that I need privileges to launch mount command. I could run the script as sudo, but I prefer it to make sudo by its own.
I already know that it is not safe to write your password into a .py file, but we are talking about a virtual machine that is not critical at all: I just want to click the .py script and get it working.
This is my attempt:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import subprocess
sudoPassword = 'mypass'
command = 'mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder'
subprocess.Popen('sudo -S' , shell=True,stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
subprocess.Popen(sudoPassword , shell=True,stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
subprocess.Popen(command , shell=True,stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
My python version is 2.6

Many answers focus on how to make your solution work, while very few suggest that your solution is a very bad approach. If you really want to "practice to learn", why not practice using good solutions? Hardcoding your password is learning the wrong approach!
If what you really want is a password-less mount for that volume, maybe sudo isn't needed at all! So may I suggest other approaches?
Use /etc/fstab as mensi suggested. Use options user and noauto to let regular users mount that volume.
Use Polkit for passwordless actions: Configure a .policy file for your script with <allow_any>yes</allow_any> and drop at /usr/share/polkit-1/actions
Edit /etc/sudoers to allow your user to use sudo without typing your password. As #Anders suggested, you can restrict such usage to specific commands, thus avoiding unlimited passwordless root priviledges in your account. See this answer for more details on /etc/sudoers.
All the above allow passwordless root privilege, none require you to hardcode your password. Choose any approach and I can explain it in more detail.
As for why it is a very bad idea to hardcode passwords, here are a few good links for further reading:
Why You Shouldn’t Hard Code Your Passwords When Programming
How to keep secrets secret
(Alternatives to Hardcoding Passwords)
What's more secure? Hard coding credentials or storing them in a database?
Use of hard-coded credentials, a dangerous programming error: CWE
Hard-coded passwords remain a key security flaw

sudoPassword = 'mypass'
command = 'mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder'
p = os.system('echo %s|sudo -S %s' % (sudoPassword, command))
Try this and let me know if it works. :-)
And this one:
os.popen("sudo -S %s"%(command), 'w').write('mypass')

To pass the password to sudo's stdin:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
sudo_password = 'mypass'
command = 'mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder'.split()
p = Popen(['sudo', '-S'] + command, stdin=PIPE, stderr=PIPE,
universal_newlines=True)
sudo_prompt = p.communicate(sudo_password + '\n')[1]
Note: you could probably configure passwordless sudo or SUDO_ASKPASS command instead of hardcoding your password in the source code.

Use -S option in the sudo command which tells to read the password from 'stdin' instead of the terminal device.
Tell Popen to read stdin from PIPE.
Send the Password to the stdin PIPE of the process by using it as an argument to communicate method. Do not forget to add a new line character, '\n', at the end of the password.
sp = Popen(cmd , shell=True, stdin=PIPE)
out, err = sp.communicate(_user_pass+'\n')

subprocess.Popen creates a process and opens pipes and stuff. What you are doing is:
Start a process sudo -S
Start a process mypass
Start a process mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder
which is obviously not going to work. You need to pass the arguments to Popen. If you look at its documentation, you will notice that the first argument is actually a list of the arguments.

I used this for python 3.5. I did it using subprocess module.Using the password like this is very insecure.
The subprocess module takes command as a list of strings so either create a list beforehand using split() or pass the whole list later. Read the documentation for moreinformation.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import subprocess
sudoPassword = 'mypass'
command = 'mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder'.split()
cmd1 = subprocess.Popen(['echo',sudoPassword], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
cmd2 = subprocess.Popen(['sudo','-S'] + command, stdin=cmd1.stdout, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output = cmd2.stdout.read.decode()

sometimes require a carriage return:
os.popen("sudo -S %s"%(command), 'w').write('mypass\n')

Please try module pexpect. Here is my code:
import pexpect
remove = pexpect.spawn('sudo dpkg --purge mytool.deb')
remove.logfile = open('log/expect-uninstall-deb.log', 'w')
remove.logfile.write('try to dpkg --purge mytool\n')
if remove.expect(['(?i)password.*']) == 0:
# print "successfull"
remove.sendline('mypassword')
time.sleep(2)
remove.expect(pexpect.EOF,5)
else:
raise AssertionError("Fail to Uninstall deb package !")

To limit what you run as sudo, you could run
python non_sudo_stuff.py
sudo -E python -c "import os; os.system('sudo echo 1')"
without needing to store the password. The -E parameter passes your current user's env to the process. Note that your shell will have sudo priveleges after the second command, so use with caution!

I know it is always preferred not to hardcode the sudo password in the script. However, for some reason, if you have no permission to modify /etc/sudoers or change file owner, Pexpect is a feasible alternative.
Here is a Python function sudo_exec for your reference:
import platform, os, logging
import subprocess, pexpect
log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
def sudo_exec(cmdline, passwd):
osname = platform.system()
if osname == 'Linux':
prompt = r'\[sudo\] password for %s: ' % os.environ['USER']
elif osname == 'Darwin':
prompt = 'Password:'
else:
assert False, osname
child = pexpect.spawn(cmdline)
idx = child.expect([prompt, pexpect.EOF], 3)
if idx == 0: # if prompted for the sudo password
log.debug('sudo password was asked.')
child.sendline(passwd)
child.expect(pexpect.EOF)
return child.before

It works in python 2.7 and 3.8:
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
from shlex import split
proc = Popen(split('sudo -S %s' % command), bufsize=0, stdout=PIPE, stdin=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
proc.stdin.write((password +'\n').encode()) # write as bytes
proc.stdin.flush() # need if not bufsize=0 (unbuffered stdin)
without .flush() password will not reach sudo if stdin buffered.
In python 2.7 Popen by default used bufsize=0 and stdin.flush() was not needed.
For secure using, create password file in protected directory:
mkdir --mode=700 ~/.prot_dir
nano ~/.prot_dir/passwd.txt
chmod 600 ~/.prot_dir/passwd.txt
at start your py-script read password from ~/.prot_dir/passwd.txt
with open(os.environ['HOME'] +'/.prot_dir/passwd.txt') as f:
password = f.readline().rstrip()

import os
os.system("echo TYPE_YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE | sudo -S TYPE_YOUR_LINUX_COMMAND")
Open your ide and run the above code. Please change TYPE_YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE and TYPE_YOUR_LINUX_COMMAND to your linux admin password and your desired linux command after that run your python script. Your output will show on terminal. Happy Coding :)

You can use SSHScript . Below are example codes:
## filename: example.spy
sudoPassword = 'mypass'
command = 'mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder'
$$echo #{sudoPassword} | sudo -S #{command}
or, simply one line (almost the same as running on console)
## filename: example.spy
$$echo mypass | sudo -S mount -t vboxsf myfolder /home/myuser/myfolder
Then, run it on console
sshscript example.spy
Where "sshscript" is the CLI of SSHScript (installed by pip).

solution im going with,because password in plain txt in an env file on dev pc is ok, and variable in the repo and gitlab runner is masked.
use .dotenv put pass in .env on local machine, DONT COMMIT .env to git.
add same var in gitlab variable
.env file has:
PASSWORD=superpass
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()
subprocess.run(f'echo {os.getenv("PASSWORD")} | sudo -S rm /home//folder/filetodelete_created_as_root.txt', shell=True, check=True)
this works locally and in gitlab. no plain password is committed to repo.
yes, you can argue running a sudo command w shell true is kind of crazy, but if you have files written to host from a docker w root, and you need to pro-grammatically delete them, this is functional.

HOW TO use fabric use with dtach,screen,is there some example

i have googled a lot,and in fabric faq also said use screen dtach with it ,but didn't find how to implement it?
bellow is my wrong code,the sh will not execute as excepted it is a nohup task
def dispatch():
run("cd /export/workspace/build/ && if [ -f spider-fetcher.zip ];then mv spider-fetcher.zip spider-fetcher.zip.bak;fi")
put("/root/build/spider-fetcher.zip","/export/workspace/build/")
run("cd /export/script/ && sh ./restartCrawl.sh && echo 'finished'")

I've managed to do it in two steps:
Start tmux session on remote server in detached mode:
run("tmux new -d -s foo")
Send command to the detached tmux session:
run("tmux send -t foo.0 ls ENTER")
here '-t' determines target session ('foo') and 'foo.0' tells the
number of the pane the 'ls' command is to be executed in.

you can just prepend screen to the command you want to run:
run("screen long running command")
Fabric though doesn't keep state like something like expect would, as each run/sudo/etc are their own sperate command runs without knowing the state of the last command. Eg run("cd /var");run("pwd") will not print /var but the home dir of the user who has logged into the box.

How to start a background process with nohup using Fabric?

Through Fabric, I am trying to start a celerycam process using the below nohup command. Unfortunately, nothing is happening. Manually using the same command, I could start the process but not through Fabric. Any advice on how can I solve this?
def start_celerycam():
'''Start celerycam daemon'''
with cd(env.project_dir):
virtualenv('nohup bash -c "python manage.py celerycam --logfile=%scelerycam.log --pidfile=%scelerycam.pid &> %scelerycam.nohup &> %scelerycam.err" &' % (env.celery_log_dir,env.celery_log_dir,env.celery_log_dir,env.celery_log_dir))

I'm using Erich Heine's suggestion to use 'dtach' and it's working pretty well for me:
def runbg(cmd, sockname="dtach"):
return run('dtach -n `mktemp -u /tmp/%s.XXXX` %s' % (sockname, cmd))
This was found here.

As I have experimented, the solution is a combination of two factors:
run process as a daemon: nohup ./command &> /dev/null &
use pty=False for fabric run
So, your function should look like this:
def background_run(command):
command = 'nohup %s &> /dev/null &' % command
run(command, pty=False)
And you can launch it with:
execute(background_run, your_command)

This is an instance of this issue. Background processes will be killed when the command ends. Unfortunately on CentOS 6 doesn't support pty-less sudo commands.
The final entry in the issue mentions using sudo('set -m; service servicename start'). This turns on Job Control and therefore background processes are put in their own process group. As a result they are not terminated when the command ends.
For even more information see this link.

you just need to run
run("(nohup yourcommand >& /dev/null < /dev/null &) && sleep 1")

DTACH is the way to go. It's a software you need to install like a lite version of screen.
This is a better version of the "dtach"-method found above, it will install dtach if necessary. It's to be found here where you can also learn how to get the output of the process which is running in the background:
from fabric.api import run
from fabric.api import sudo
from fabric.contrib.files import exists
def run_bg(cmd, before=None, sockname="dtach", use_sudo=False):
"""Run a command in the background using dtach
:param cmd: The command to run
:param output_file: The file to send all of the output to.
:param before: The command to run before the dtach. E.g. exporting
environment variable
:param sockname: The socket name to use for the temp file
:param use_sudo: Whether or not to use sudo
"""
if not exists("/usr/bin/dtach"):
sudo("apt-get install dtach")
if before:
cmd = "{}; dtach -n `mktemp -u /tmp/{}.XXXX` {}".format(
before, sockname, cmd)
else:
cmd = "dtach -n `mktemp -u /tmp/{}.XXXX` {}".format(sockname, cmd)
if use_sudo:
return sudo(cmd)
else:
return run(cmd)
May this help you, like it helped me to run omxplayer via fabric on a remote rasberry pi!

You can use :
run('nohup /home/ubuntu/spider/bin/python3 /home/ubuntu/spider/Desktop/baidu_index/baidu_index.py > /home/ubuntu/spider/Desktop/baidu_index/baidu_index.py.log 2>&1 &', pty=False)

nohup did not work for me and I did not have tmux or dtach installed on all the boxes I wanted to use this on so I ended up using screen like so:
run("screen -d -m bash -c '{}'".format(command), pty=False)
This tells screen to start a bash shell in a detached terminal that runs your command

You could be running into this issue
Try adding 'pty=False' to the sudo command (I assume virtualenv is calling sudo or run somewhere?)

This worked for me:
sudo('python %s/manage.py celerycam --detach --pidfile=celerycam.pid' % siteDir)
Edit: I had to make sure the pid file was removed first so this was the full code:
# Create new celerycam
sudo('rm celerycam.pid', warn_only=True)
sudo('python %s/manage.py celerycam --detach --pidfile=celerycam.pid' % siteDir)

I was able to circumvent this issue by running nohup ... & over ssh in a separate local shell script. In fabfile.py:
#task
def startup():
local('./do-stuff-in-background.sh {0}'.format(env.host))
and in do-stuff-in-background.sh:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
set -o nounset
HOST=$1
ssh $HOST -T << HERE
nohup df -h 1>>~/df.log 2>>~/df.err &
HERE
Of course, you could also pass in the command and standard output / error log files as arguments to make this script more generally useful.
(In my case, I didn't have admin rights to install dtach, and neither screen -d -m nor pty=False / sleep 1 worked properly for me. YMMV, especially as I have no idea why this works...)