python subprocess.Popen hide real "display name"

Question

I want to execute a subprocess in python, and the subprocess require an argument to specify a password. By default, everyone who can login this machine can get the password with the ps utility when my subprocess is running.

And I know Popen has an __executable__ param, which can hide the real program name, but cannot hide the password argument of the subprocess.

How can I hide my password?

PS: I running on linux.

Answer 1

I don't think you can do that for subprocess, but there is a library to do it from subprocess: http://code.google.com/p/py-setproctitle/

The method is specific to each OS; some systems don't support that at all. If possible, give password to the subprocess by other means (e.g. via stdin pipe).

Answer 2

subprocess doesn't expose an API to do that. I'd recommend passing the password to the command using an environment variable:

subprocess.check_call('command --password="$PASSWORD"', shell=True,
                      env=dict(os.environ, PASSWORD=password))