Can subprocess.Popen be used when called from py code running under mod_wsgi in Apache2

Question

Hi,

I'm using subprocess.Popen and getting IOErrors when running under mod_wsgi. The following code will work in a python term, or a django runserver, and under mod_python. If you put it under mod_wsgi (v2), it fails: (2, 'No such file or directory') I have tried many variations involving using subprocess.PIPE. I have tried to redefine stdout, and to use the httpd directives to turn off mod_wsgi's complains of stdout usage. I recently tried upgrading to version 3.

import subprocess

input_file = 'test.html'

p = subprocess.Popen(['htmldoc','-f', 'output.pdf', '--book', input_file])

p.communicate()

len(open('output.pdf').read())

My test effort is going to be to move back to mod_python, and see if the problem goes away. I'd like to know if anyone else has done this and can shed some light on this problem.

Answer 1

That error message means that Popen can't find htmldoc. Check your $PATH environment variable through os.environ['PATH'] and make sure that htmldoc is installed in one of the paths there.

Alternatively, you can call Popen using an absolute path. For example,

subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/htmldoc', ...