Script works from command line, but not when called automatically by PI

Question

This script works when i call it from the command line, but when i have "Motion" call it following the save of a jpg to my PI, it only sends the emails.

I'm mostly get about 10 jpgs, for each event, so wondered if the script was being upset by being called again whilst running. Just a hunch, but how could i test for this, and possibly rectify?

#!/usr/bin/env python

import smtplib
import time
import subprocess

from email.mime.text import MIMEText

USERNAME = ""
PASSWORD = ""
MAILTO  = ""

msg = MIMEText('blar blar')
msg['Subject'] = 'from pi script test1'
msg['From'] = USERNAME
msg['To'] = MAILTO

server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com:587')
server.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()
server.starttls()
server.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()
server.login(USERNAME,PASSWORD)
server.sendmail(USERNAME, MAILTO, msg.as_string())
server.quit()

time.sleep(20)
subprocess.call("cp /mnt/*.jpg  /home/pi/box/pi_pictures", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

Answer 1

I found the reason why it wasn't working, I needed to set the permissions on the PI_pictures folder to 0777! for other users!

Answer 2

Motion runs as the user motion by default, and it sounds as though is running into a permission problem with the file operation.

If this is the case, you could:

• Set the permissions so that motion can write to your pi_pictures directory (most preferable); or
• Prefix the cp command with sudo (easiest fix)

Let me know if you want example commands for any of this, or if it doesn't solve your problem.