How to call bash process from within django / wsgi?

Question

I'm using mod_wsgi apache2 adapter for a django site and I like to call some bash process within a view, using the usual

...
p = subprocess.Popen("/home/example.com/restart-tomcat.sh", shell=True)
sts = os.waitpid(p.pid, 0)[1]
...

This code works perfectly from within a usual python shell but does nothing (I can trace right now) when called within django. Am I missing some wsgi constraints? The script has 755 perms, so it should be executable.

A quick test

p = subprocess.Popen("date >> home/example.com/wsgi-test.txt", shell=True)
sts = os.waitpid(p.pid, 0)[1]

reveals that it does not even executes trivial commands. I am out of ideas at the moment and thankful for any input.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The script itself may have 755 permissions, but things it calls might not have the correct permissions. Especially if you have tomcat running on port 80, which is a privileged port.

There are ways you can get around this sort of thing (setuid, sudo), but you'd better know exactly what you're doing.

I'd change your Popen call to open a different script that has the contents date >> /home/example.com/test.txt just to see if it's executing it at all, and then you can worry about trying to debug permissions.

Answer 2

Writing To Standard Output

here: http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/ApplicationIssues

Does that apply here? I'm research a similar problem....