command-runner 1.3.0

Platform agnostic command and shell execution tool, also allows UAC/sudo privilege elevation

command_runner

A python tool for rapid platform agnostic command execution and UAC/sudo elevation

command_runner's purpose is to run external commands from python, just like subprocess on which it is based, while solving various problems a developer may face among:

• Handling of all possible subprocess.popen / subprocess.check_output scenarios / python versions in one handy function
• System agnostic functionality, the developer shouldn't carry the burden of Windows & Linux differences
• Optional Windows UAC elevation module compatible with CPython, PyInstaller & Nuitka
• Optional Linux sudo elevation compatible with CPython, PyInstaller & Nuitka

It is compatible with Python 2.7+ (backports some newer Python 3.5 functionality) and is tested on both Linux and Windows.

command_runner

command_runner is a replacement package for subprocess.popen and subprocess.check_output The main promise command_runner can do is to make sure to never have a blocking command, and always get results.

It works as wrapper for subprocess.popen and subprocess.check_output that solves:

• Platform differences
  • Handle timeouts even for windows GUI applications that don't return anything to stdout
• Python language version differences
  • Handle timeouts even on earlier Python implementations
  • Handle encoding even on earlier Python implementations
• Keep the promise to always return an exit code (so we don't have to deal with exit codes and exception logic at the same time)
• Keep the promise to always return the command output regardless of the execution state (even with timeouts and keyboard interrupts)
• Can show command output on the fly without waiting the end of execution (with live_output=True argument)
• Catch all possible exceptions and log them

command_runner also promises to properly kill commands when timeouts are reached, including spawned subprocesses of such commands. This specific behavior is achieved via psutil module, which is an optional dependency.

command_runner in a nutshell

Install with pip install command_runner

The following example will work regardless of the host OS and the Python version.

from command_runner import command_runner

exit_code, output = command_runner('ping 127.0.0.1', timeout=30, encoding='utf-8')

Guide

Setup

pip install command_runner or download the latest git release

Advanced command_runner usage

Special exit codes

In order to keep the promise to always provide an exit_code, some arbitrary exit codes have been added for the case where none is given. Those exit codes are:

• -252 : KeyboardInterrupt
• -253 : FileNotFoundError, OSError, IOError
• -254 : Timeout
• -255 : Any other uncatched exceptions

This allows you to use the standard exit code logic, without having to deal with various exceptions.

Default encoding

command_runner has an encoding argument which defaults to utf-8 for Unixes and cp437 for Windows platforms. Using cp437 ensures that most cmd.exe output is encoded properly, including accents and special characters, on most locale systems. Still you can specify your own encoding for other usages, like Powershell where unicode_escape is preferred.

from command_runner import *

command = r'C:\Windows\sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe --help'
exit_code, output = command_runner(command, encoding='unicode_escape')

Earlier subprocess.popen implementations didn't have an encoding setting so command_runner will deal with encoding for those.

On the fly (interactive) output

command_runner can output a command output on the fly to stdout, eg show output during execution. This is helpful when the command is long, and we need to know the output while execution is ongoing. It is also helpful in order to catch partial command output when timeout is reached or a CTRL+C signal is received. Example:

from command_runner import command_runner

exit_code, output = command_runner('ping 127.0.0.1', shell=True, live_output=True)

Note: using live output relies on stdout pipe polling, which has lightly higher cpu usage.

To file redirection

command_runner can redirect stdout and stderr to files.

Example (of course this also works with unix paths):

from command_runner import *

exit_code, output = command_runner('dir', stdout='C:/tmp/command_result', stderr='C:/tmp/command_error', shell=True)

Timeouts

command_runner as a timeout argument which defaults to 3600 seconds. This default setting ensures commands will not block the main script execution. Feel free to lower / higher that setting with timeout argument. Note that a command_runner kills the whole process tree that the command may have generated, even under Windows.

from command_runner import *

exit_code, output = command_runner('ping 127.0.0.1', timeout=30)

Remarks on processes

Using shell=True will spawn a shell which will spawn the desired child process. Be aware that under MS Windows, no direct process tree is available. We fixed this by walking processes during runtime. The drawback is that orphaned processes cannot be identified this way.

Disabling logs

Whenever you want another loglevel for command_runner, you might do with the following statement in your code

import logging
import command_runner

logging.getLogger('command_runner').setLevel(logging.ERROR)

Capture method

command_runner allows two different process output capture methods:

method='monitor' which is default:

• A thread is spawned in order to check timeout and kill process if needed
• A main loop waits for the process to finish, then uses proc.communicate() to get it's output
• Pros: less CPU usage
• Cons: cannot read partial output on KeyboardInterrupt (still works for partial timeout output)

method='poller':

• A thread is spawned and reads stdout pipe into a output queue
• A poller loop reads from the output queue and checks timeout
• Pros: Reads on the fly, allowing interactive commands (is also used with live_output=True)
• Cons: Lightly higher CPU usage

Other arguments

command_runner takes any argument that subprocess.Popen() would take.

It also uses the following standard arguments:

• command: The command, doesn't need to be a list, a simple string works
• valid_exit_codes: List of exit codes which won't trigger error logs
• timeout: seconds before a process tree is killed forcefully, defaults to 3600
• shell: Shall we use the cmd.exe or /usr/bin/env shell for command execution, defaults to False
• encoding: Which text encoding the command produces, defaults to cp437 under Windows and utf-8 under Linux
• stdout: Optional path to filename where to dump stdout
• stderr: Optional path to filename where to dump stderr
• windows_no_window: Shall a command create a console window (MS Windows only), defaults to False
• live_output: Print output to stdout while executing command, defaults to False
• method: Accepts 'poller' or 'monitor' stdout capture and timeout monitoring methods
• close_fds: Like Popen, defaults to True on Linux and False on Windows
• universal_newlines: Like Popen, defaults to False
• creation_flags: Like Popen, defaults to 0
• bufsize: Like Popen, defaults to 16384. Line buffering (bufsize=1) is deprecated since Python 3.7

UAC Elevation / sudo elevation

command_runner package allowing privilege elevation. Becoming an admin is fairly easy with command_runner.elevate You only have to import the elevate module, and then launch your main function with the elevate function.

elevation In a nutshell

from command_runner.elevate import elevate

def main():
    """My main function that should be elevated"""
    print("Who's the administrator, now ?")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    elevate(main)

elevate function handles arguments (positional and keyword arguments). elevate(main, arg, arg2, kw=somearg) will call main(arg, arg2, kw=somearg)

Advanced elevate usage

is_admin() function

The elevate module has a nifty is_admin() function that returns a boolean according to your current root/administrator privileges. Usage:

from command_runner.elevate import is_admin

print('Am I an admin ? %s' % is_admin())

sudo elevation

Initially designed for Windows UAC, command_runner.elevate can also elevate privileges on Linux, using the sudo command. This is mainly designed for PyInstaller / Nuitka executables, as it's really not safe to allow automatic privilege elevation of a Python interpreter.

Example for a binary in /usr/local/bin/my_compiled_python_binary

You'll have to allow this file to be run with sudo without a password prompt. This can be achieved in /etc/sudoers file.

Example for Redhat / Rocky Linux, where adding the following line will allow the elevation process to succeed without password:

someuser ALL= NOPASSWD:/usr/local/bin/my_compiled_python_binary