Start process, hide arguments from ps

Question

I have a Python script that interfaces with an API. The script is started from a PHP page. I wrote both scripts, so I can change the code in either as appropriate.

The Python script needs a username and password to interface with the API. My first inclination is to pass them to Python as CLI arguments:

<?php
exec('python someScript.py AzureDiamond hunter2');
?>

However, anybody can then see the credentials via ps:

$ ps | grep someScript
1000     23295  2.0  0.2 116852  9252 pts/0    S+   15:47   0:00 python someScript.py AzureDiamond hunter2

Alternatives that I am considering are to write the data to a text file or sqlite database, then to delete them. Are there any better ideas? A constraint with the sqlite approach is that this needs to run in a rather portable fashion (phpFox Plugin) and most budget webhosts don't support the sqlite3 module.

Answer 1

You could use environment variables which you set in PHP and read in the Python script.