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I have a python script to send me an email when i detect motion from my noir Pi camera, which is been successfully called.

I know the script is being called, as i get the email on movement; but the script doesn't copy the jpgs from /mnt/ to /home/pi/box/pi_pictures

Have i got the subprocess.call syntax correct at the bottom of this script?

#!/usr/bin/env python

import smtplib
import subprocess


from email.mime.text import MIMEText

USERNAME = "theemailaddressisendfrom.com"
PASSWORD = "mypassword"
MAILTO  = "myemailaddress.com"

msg = MIMEText('blar blar')
msg['Subject'] = 'from pi script test1'
msg['From'] = USERNAME
msg['To'] = MAILTO

server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com:587')
server.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()
server.starttls()
server.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()
server.login(USERNAME,PASSWORD)
server.sendmail(USERNAME, MAILTO, msg.as_string())
server.quit()


time.sleep(20)
subprocess.call("cp /mnt/*.jpg  /home/pi/box/pi_pictures", shell=True)
share|improve this question
    
When you are looking into the the /mnt directory can you see you jpg files doing a ls command or are they in a sub directory ? –  dry Mar 4 '14 at 14:45
    
I can see them in the /mnt directory( no sub directory). the command "cp /mnt/*.jpg /home/pi/box/pi_pictures" works from the command line, but not from the python script. –  reggie Mar 4 '14 at 15:10
    
If you are seeing them then maybe try to catch the output of the command execution calling subprocess_check_output function (if you are using python version > 2.7 ) subprocess.check_output(['cp', '/mnt/*.jpg','/home/pi/box/pi_pictures']) –  dry Mar 4 '14 at 15:30
    
subprocess.check_output(['cp', '/mnt/*.jpg','/home/pi/box/pi_pictures']) doesn't work either –  reggie Mar 4 '14 at 16:23
    
I always use subprocess.call("cp /mnt/*.jpg /home/pi/box/pi_pictures", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE). Maybe this helps. Otherwise try adding the full path of cp, So "/bin/cp /mnt..." –  Gerben Mar 4 '14 at 16:45

2 Answers 2

up vote 1 down vote

Iv'e just found out what was wrong,

the script was hanging at time.sleep(20) because i didn't have import time at the top.

Oops!

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

I suspect it's the wildcard *.jpg in there messing it all up. If you're using that you have to run it with the shell=True. At that point the first argument must be a single line, like you have it. Breaking it down into an array will result in the * being treated as a literal and the different file names won't be inserted instead. You can try adding 

stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE

to get some output from the command.

If you don't specifically need the capability of subprocess, it may be worth trying to use

os.system("cp /mnt/*.jpg  /home/pi/box/pi_pictures")

instead.

share|improve this answer
    
I tried adding 1) import os at top and 2) os.system("cp /mnt/*.jpg /home/pi/box/pi_pictures") at end, but still didn't work. –  reggie Mar 4 '14 at 17:25
    
the cp = coppy, is not part of the path, i assumed people knew that –  reggie Mar 4 '14 at 17:27

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