subprocess.Popen(): OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error in python?

Question

Yesterday, I wrote and ran a python script which executes a shell using subprocess.Popen(command.split()) where command is string which constitutes .sh script and its argument. This script was working fine until yesterday. Today, I ran the same script and now I am continuously hitting this error.

p=subprocess.Popen(shell_command.split()) 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 8] Exec format error 

I know there are similar questions that have been asked before related to this question, but in my case I tried everything which doesn't solve my purpose. Using shell=True does not work because my shell script calls an another shell script before which some environment has to be set in order to run that script. I am badly stuck in this. I just restart my system once. I am using ubuntu 12.04

EDIT:

 import subprocess  import os  import sys   arg1=sys.argv[1]  arg2=sys.argve[2]   shell_command = 'my_path/my_shell.sh ' + arg1 + ' '+ arg2  P = subprocess.Popen(shell_command.split())  P.wait() 

my_shell.sh:

  arg1=$1   arg2=$2    cd $TOP   setup the environment and run shell script   build the kernel ...   execute shell command ..... 

Answer 1

I solved this by putting this line at the top of the called shell script:

#!/bin/sh

That will guarantee that the system always uses the correct interpreter when running your script.