running a command as a super user from a python script

Silfheed_28421 0
Viewed 151804

So I'm trying to get a process to be run as a super user from within a python script using subprocess. In the ipython shell something like

proc = subprocess.Popen('sudo apach2ctl restart',
                        shell=True, stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
                        stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                        stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

works fine, but as soon as I stick it into a script I start getting: sudo: apach2ctl: command not found.

I would guess this is due to the way sudo handles environments on ubuntu. (I've also tried sudo -E apche2ctl restart and sudo env path=$PATH apache2ctl restart with no avail)

So my question is basically, if I want to run apache2ctl restart as super user that prompts the user for the super user password when required, how should I go about doing this? I have no intention of storing passwords in the script.

Edit:

I've tried passing in the commands as both a string and tokenized into a list. In the python interpreter, with a string I'll get the password prompt properly (still doesnt work in a python script as in my original problem), a list just gives the help screen for sudo.

Edit 2:

So what I gather is that while Popen will work with some commands just as strings when shell=True, it takes

proc = subprocess.Popen(['sudo','/usr/sbin/apache2ctl','restart'])

without 'shell=True' to get sudo to work.

Thanks!

sudo subprocess python
8 Answers

Try:

subprocess.call(['sudo', 'apach2ctl', 'restart'])

The subprocess needs to access the real stdin/out/err for it to be able to prompt you, and read in your password. If you set them up as pipes, you need to feed the password into that pipe yourself.

If you don't define them, then it grabs sys.stdout, etc...

user_665020

Try giving the full path to apache2ctl.

dwc_573010

The safest way to do this is to prompt for the password beforehand and then pipe it into the command. Prompting for the password will avoid having the password saved anywhere in your code and it also won't show up in your bash history. Here's an example:

from getpass import getpass
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

password = getpass("Please enter your password: ")
# sudo requires the flag '-S' in order to take input from stdin
proc = Popen("sudo -S apach2ctl restart".split(), stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
# Popen only accepts byte-arrays so you must encode the string
proc.communicate(password.encode())
user_74873350

You have to use Popen like this:

cmd = ['sudo', 'apache2ctl', 'restart']
proc = subprocess.Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

It expects a list.

Harley_10570

To run a command as root, and pass it the password at the command prompt, you could do it as so:

import subprocess
from getpass import getpass

ls = "sudo -S ls -al".split()
cmd = subprocess.run(
    ls, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, input=getpass("password: "), encoding="ascii",
)
print(cmd.stdout)

For your example, probably something like this:

import subprocess
from getpass import getpass

restart_apache = "sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl restart".split()
proc = subprocess.run(
    restart_apache,
    stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
    input=getpass("password: "),
    encoding="ascii",
)
user_66729460
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