I am trying to execute sudo commands from Python 3. I usually run my terminal commands in Python using subprocess. There are already many questions discussing this topic but I could not find any solution that works for me.
My Os is Ubuntu 18.04 and I am working with Python 3.6 and PyCharm.
I cannot manage to enter the password using subprocess no matter how I try. My script always gets stuck trying to enter the sudo password. After the first answer I realized, that the problem is not about my Code, the Problem is with PyCharm. All the following attempts work fine when running them from Console, but they get stuck when I am running them from the PyCharm Interpreter. Here are all the versions I tried:
Attempt 1:
import subprocess
sudo_password = b"myPassword\n"
print(subprocess.check_output('sudo -S echo success', shell=True, input=sudo_password)) #stuck here
This seemed to be the easiest way of solving the issue, but somehow subprocess could not enter the password, it would always get stuck until I killed the process.
Attempt 2:
import subprocess
sudo_password = b"myPassword\n"
proc = subprocess.Popen('sudo -S echo success', shell=True, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
proc.stdin.write(sudo_password)
proc.stdin.flush()
print(proc.stdout.readlines()) #stuck here
On my second attempt I tried to handle the instream myself which did not seem to work either. The program would get stuck when reading the lines of the outstream. When I abort the code I get following Error message indicating that the console has been prompted for the password but It could somehow not be entered.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/anon/sudo.py", line 7, in <module>
[sudo] password for anon: print(proc.stdout.readlines()) #stuck here
KeyboardInterrupt
Attempt 3:
I knew that I could pipe the password into the sudo command from terminal:
anon@anon:~$ echo myPassword | sudo -S echo success
[sudo] password for anon: success
So I tried to do the same thing using subprocess:
import subprocess
sudo_password = "myPassword"
print(subprocess.check_output("echo {} | sudo -S echo success".format(sudo_password), shell=True)) #stuck here
But yet again this approach just got stuck just like all the other approaches.
Attempt 4:
import subprocess
import os
sudo_password = "myPassword"
with open("temp.sh", 'w') as file:
file.write("echo {} | sudo -S echo success".format(sudo_password))
print(subprocess.check_output("sh temp.sh", shell=True)) #stuck here
os.remove("temp.sh")
So in my last desperate attempt I thought I might succeed if I put my command into a shell file and execute that with subprocess since I would not have any sudo commands entered directly to subprocess. This worked out well when I tried it in the terminal myself:
anon@anon:~$ sh temp.sh
[sudo] password for anon: success
But the Python script got stuck at the same place as before.
Does anyone know why these attempts fail and how I could achieve my goal anyways?
Edit:
Someone linked me an old post about this topic which used os instead of subprocess. os is deprecated and subprocess should be used instead thats why I haven't originally shown any of these attempts in this question, but it does also get stuck when using os:
import os
sudo_password = "myPassword"
p = os.system('echo {} | sudo -S echo success'.format(sudo_password)) #stuck here
Edit 2:
Ok now I figured out, that all of my attempts and also the suggestion from the first answer would actually work if you run the scripts from terminal with:
anon@anon:~$ python3 checksudo.py
So the problem seem to lay with my interpreter, PyCharm. This is also what makes my question unique to this question, because their issue does not come from their interpreter.
Does anyone have any suggestions how to make the code work in PyCharm or should I just run all my scripts from Console anyways?
