OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory while using python subprocess in Django

Question

I am trying to run a program to make some system calls inside Python code using subprocess.call() which throws the following error:

Traceback (m         


        

Answer 1

Use shell=True if you're passing a string to subprocess.call.

From docs:

If passing a single string, either shell must be True or else the string must simply name the program to be executed without specifying any arguments.

subprocess.call(crop, shell=True)

or:

import shlex
subprocess.call(shlex.split(crop))

Answer 2

Can't upvote so I'll repost @jfs comment cause I think it should be more visible.

@AnneTheAgile: shell=True is not required. Moreover you should not use it unless it is necessary (see @ valid's comment). You should pass each command-line argument as a separate list item instead e.g., use ['command', 'arg 1', 'arg 2'] instead of "command 'arg 1' 'arg 2'". – jfs Mar 3 '15 at 10:02

Answer 3

No such file or directory can be also raised if you are trying to put a file argument to Popen with double-quotes.

For example:

call_args = ['mv', '"path/to/file with spaces.txt"', 'somewhere']

In this case, you need to remove double-quotes.

call_args = ['mv', 'path/to/file with spaces.txt', 'somewhere']