[Answered ]-Django: why when I use Ghostscript via popen in django do I get a "file not found" error

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The error you’re getting means that the subprocess module cannot find the executable it wants to run.

If the script runs from the command-line then the gs executable clearly exists, so it looks like the gs executable is not on the PATH that your Django application is running with. Does it help if you specify the full path to gs (e.g. /usr/bin/gs) instead?

Incidentally, I get the same error message if I try to get subprocess to start a nonexistent executable:

Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug  1 2012, 05:14:39) 
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call("nonexistent")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 493, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 679, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 1249, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

EDIT: if your process uses command-line arguments, the executable name and the argument must be specified as separate list items, as in the second of your attempts at running gs:

Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug  1 2012, 05:14:39) 
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call("ls /usr")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 493, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 679, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 1249, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
>>> subprocess.call(["ls", "/usr"])
bin  games  include  lib  lib32  lib64  local  sbin  share  src  X11R6
0

The first example didn’t work because I don’t have an executable named ls /usr anywhere on my system.

Could you try modifying the second of your attempts to use the full path of gs, for example:

sp = subprocess.Popen(['/usr/bin/gs', '-dSAFER', '-dNOPAUSE', '-dQUIET', '-dBATCH', '-sDEVICE=jpeg', '-sOUTPUTFILE=' + path + "/static.jpg", path + "/source.pdf"])
👤Luke Woodward

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