Thank you both for your help. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. I had the expect mindset, and was determined to get it working that way.
I added an entry for sudo for the script and it works without a hitch. I'm still curious to know what was going on to disallow the authentication in pexpect. I had added 'www' to user 'admin', and could su to root from the command line, so I don't think that was it. Maybe it was a timing error, ie pexpect fired off the password too soon or too late, or something in the apache environment that just disallowed becoming root for security reasons. Problem solved. ~Sean martdi wrote: > Since it wont require pyexpect, and based on the operations you > accomplish with your python script, maybe that a bash script instead of > a python one might be the best tool for the job you're trying to > accomplish. > > > martdi wrote: > > Sudo is probably the best solution here, since in the file sudo.conf > > you could restrict the www user only to the python script that requires > > it. > > > > Also, using either sudo or the setuid flag would remove the need of > > pexpect since all the commands will be run as the designated user. > > > > for setuid flag: > > chmod u+s pythonScript.py > > chown root pythonScript.py > > > > for the sudo solution, add an entry to /etc/sudo.conf or /etc/sudoers , > > depending on distro: > > the syntax for a line in sudo.conf is: > > user hostlist = (userlist) commandlist > > > > so you might want to add: > > www localhost = NOPASSWD: /var/www/htdocs/pythonScript.py > > > > note: > > Replace the /var/www/htdocs/pythonScript.py with the path to where > > your script is > > the NOPASSWD: is a flag that tells sudo that no password is > > required > > > > Lee Harr wrote: > > > > Well, first i don't think it is a good idea to have the python script > > > > tu su to root, but for it to work, i think (Totally unsure about that) > > > > www has to be in group wheel to be able to su. > > > > > > > > > Maybe sudo can help here. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
