What user do python scripts run as in windows?

Question

I'm trying to have python delete some directories and I get access errors on them. I think its that the python user account doesn't have rights?

WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: 'path'

is what I get when I run the script.
I've tried

shutil.rmtree  
os.remove  
os.rmdir

they all return the same error.

Answer 1

I've never used Python, but I would assume it runs as whatever user executes the script.

Answer 2

How are you running the script? From an interactive console session? If so, just open up a DOS command window (using cmd) and type 'whoami'. That is who you are running the scripts interactively.

Ok I saw your edits just now...why don't you print the path and check the properties to see if the user account running the scripts has the required privileges?

If whoami does not work on your version of Windows, you may use the environment variables like SET USERNAME and SET DOMAINNAME from your command window.

Answer 3

If the script is being run as a scheduled task (which seems likely for a cleanup script), it will probably run as SYSTEM. It's (unwise, but) possible to set permissions on directories so that SYSTEM has no access.

Answer 4

Are the directories empty, and if not do those methods support decursively deleting the contents of a directory?

Answer 5

The scripts have no special user, they just run under the currently logged-in user which executed the script.

Have you tried checking that:

• you are trying to delete a valid path? and that
• the path has no locked files?

Answer 6

We've had issues removing files and directories on Windows, even if we had just copied them, if they were set to 'readonly'. shutil.rmtree() offers you sort of exception handlers to handle this situation. You call it like this:

shutil.rmtree(filename, ignore_errors=False, onerror=handleRemoveReadonly)

and provide an exception handler like this:

def handleRemoveReadonly(func, path, exc):
  excvalue = exc[1]
  if func in (os.rmdir, os.remove) and excvalue.errno == errno.EACCES:
      os.chmod(path, stat.S_IRWXU| stat.S_IRWXG| stat.S_IRWXO) # 0777
      func(path)
  else:
      raise

You migh want to try that.