How to perform a cd command and execute additional command in a new terminal from a python script?

Question

I am trying to run a python script on ubuntu18, which simply will open a new terminal/tab,navigate to a specific folder and then execute a command. But this simple task is looking very daunting due to my lack of knowledge. Expected:

In the python script $cd /home/metabase $java -jar metabase.jar

My code:

try1: cmd = "gnome-terminal --tab 'cd /home/metabase/java -jar metabase.jar; read'" os.system(cmd) New tab opens but nothing happens try2: subprocess.call(['cd /home/metabase/', 'java -jar metabase.jar']) Error:No such file or directory

I tried many other combinations. But results in either new tab not opening or new tab opens but in the same directory and does nothing. I did some reading on the problem. It seems like i am creating these subprocess and therefore when i do the CD, it does nothing. Anyways,i looked into many similar stackoverflow threads but i am still lost. Any direction would be appreciated. Thank you

that other guy · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-06 19:29:11Z

The command to open a new gnome-terminal window with a bash command is:

gnome-terminal -- bash -c 'your command'

In your case:

gnome-terminal -- bash -c 'cd /home/metabase; java -jar metabase.jar; read'

Make sure this works from a shell first. Then you can invoke it from Python:

subprocess.call(["gnome-terminal", "--", "bash", "-c", "cd /home/metabase; java -jar metabase.jar; read"])

Awesome. It works. But the parent terminal gets closed. I want to keep it open. How is that possible?

dejanualex · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-06 19:40:22Z

Why do you want to change the directory ? If you want you can do it directly :

os.system('java -jar /home/metabase/metabase.jar') which will return the process exit value , 0 means success.

Keep in mind that os.system will execute the command passed as a string in a sub-shell.

If you do not want to spawn a new shell, you can use:

subprocess.call(['java', '-jar', '/home/metabase/metabase.jar']) in this way there is no system shell started up, so the first argument must be a path to an executable file.

Thank you guys for your comments. I tried suggestion from @dejdej. The problem is that, it does not open in a new terminal, although the native cmd works on the same terminal. any suggestion?

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