Question

I try to run system "./do_backup.py" within my rake task, where do_backup.py is a python program in the same directory, but the command fails silently. I can run it using system "./do_backup.py", however.

I called system "whoami" from both within my rake task and the IRB, and the users are the same.

EDIT

Here’s the rakefile:

desc "Back up a file onto S3"
task :backup do
     S3ID = "AKIAJM3NRWxxx"
     S3KEY = "0A5kuzV+E1dkaPjxxx"
     SRCBUCKET = "rose-test-4"
     NUM_BACKUP_BUCKETS = 2

     system "whoami" 
     system "./do_backup.py #{S3ID} #{S3KEY} #{SRCBUCKET} #{NUM_BACKUP_BUCKETS}"
end

Answer 1

As discussed in the comments, this was being run from the wrong directory. You can change directories with Dir.chdir(). For example:

  ...
  Dir.chdir("lib/tasks")
  system "./do_backup.py #{S3ID} #{S3KEY} #{SRCBUCKET} #{NUM_BACKUP_BUCKETS}"
end

Of course, as @muistooshort points out, the simpler thing is to just run it from where it is:

  system "#{Rails.root}/lib/tasks/do_backup.py #{S3ID} #{S3KEY} #{SRCBUCKET} #{NUM_BACKUP_BUCKETS}"