linux command is not working in python subprocess

Question

I am trying to scan all available wifi devices using python. I wrote below code to get SSID,BSSID and device information

results = subprocess.check_output(["sudo", "nmcli", "-f", "SSID", "BSSID", "DEVICE", "dev", "wifi"])

But it is giving me error- "bssid not understood"

when I run the below command in terminal it is working fine.

sudo nmcli -f SSID,BSSID,DEVICE dev wifi

If I remove BSSID and DEVICE then it is working fine. And I am getting all the ssids

results = subprocess.check_output(["sudo", "nmcli", "-f", "SSID",  "dev", "wifi"])

I could not understand what is going wrong.

I am using

Python-3.6.8
Ubuntu-18.04.2 LTS

hiro protagonist · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-19 06:17:57Z

2

you need to pass the arguments as

["sudo", "nmcli", "-f", "SSID,BSSID,DEVICE",  "dev", "wifi"]

if the last command line really works. note that there is one argument "SSID,BSSID,DEVICE".

you could also generate the list using shlex:

import shlex

args = shlex.split("sudo nmcli -f SSID,BSSID,DEVICE dev wifi")
# ['sudo', 'nmcli', '-f', 'SSID,BSSID,DEVICE', 'dev', 'wifi']

answered Jun 19, 2019 at 6:17

hiro protagonist

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