running a command as a super user from a python script

Question

So I'm trying to get a process to be run as a super user from within a python script using subprocess. In the ipython shell something like

proc = subprocess.Popen('sudo apach2ctl restart',
                        shell=True, stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
                        stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                        stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

works fine, but as soon as I stick it into a script I start getting: sudo: apach2ctl: command not found.

I would guess this is due to the way sudo handles environments on ubuntu. (I've also tried sudo -E apche2ctl restart and sudo env path=$PATH apache2ctl restart with no avail)

So my question is basically, if I want to run apache2ctl restart as super user that prompts the user for the super user password when required, how should I go about doing this? I have no intention of storing passwords in the script.

Edit:

I've tried passing in the commands as both a string and tokenized into a list. In the python interpreter, with a string I'll get the password prompt properly (still doesnt work in a python script as in my original problem), a list just gives the help screen for sudo.

Edit 2:

So what I gather is that while Popen will work with some commands just as strings when shell=True, it takes

proc = subprocess.Popen(['sudo','/usr/sbin/apache2ctl','restart'])

without 'shell=True' to get sudo to work.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try giving the full path to apache2ctl.