Open new gnome-terminal and run command

Question

I'm trying to write a script that opens a new terminal then runs a separate python script from that terminal.

I've tried:

os.system("gnome-terminal 'python f.py'")

and

p = Popen("/usr/bin/gnome-terminal", stdin=PIPE)
p.communicate("python f.py")

but both methods only open a new terminal and do not run f.py. How would I go about opening the terminal AND running a separate script?

Edit: I would like to open a new terminal window because f.py is a simply server that is running serve_forever(). I'd like the original terminal window to stay "free" to run other commands.

Answer 1

Like most terminals, gnome terminal needs options to execute commands:

gnome-terminal [-e, --command=STRING] [-x, --execute]

You probably need to add -x option:

x, --execute

Execute the remainder of the command line inside the terminal.

so:

os.system("gnome-terminal -x python f.py")

That would not run your process in the background unless you add & to your command line BTW.

The communicate attempt would need a newline for your input but should work too, but complex processes like terminals don't "like" being redirected. It seems like using an interactive tool backwards. And again, that would block until termination. What could work would be to use p.stdin.write("python f.py\n") to give control to the python script. But in that case it's unlikely to work.

So it seems that you don't even need python do to what you want. You just need to run

python f.py &

in a shell.

Answer 2

As of GNOME Terminal 3.24.2 Using VTE version 0.48.4 +GNUTLS -PCRE2

Option “-x” is deprecated and might be removed in a later version of gnome-terminal. Use “-- ” to terminate the options and put the command line to execute after it.

Thus the preferred syntax appears to be

gnome-terminal -- echo hello

rather than

gnome-terminal -x echo hello