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Python subprocess.run can't find /bin/sh in chroot

(First off, apologies for the roughness of this question's writing-- would love any constructive feedback.)
Ok what I'm doing is a bit involved-- I'm trying to make a Python script that executes Bash scripts that each compile a component of a Linux From Scratch (LFS) system. I'm following the LFS 11.2 book pretty closely (but not 100%, although I've been very careful to check where my deviations break things. If you're familiar with LFS, this is a deviation that breaks things).
Basically, my script builds a bunch of tools (bash, tar, xz, make, gcc, binutils) with a cross compiler, and tells their build systems to install them into a directory lfs/temp-tools. Then the script calls os.chroot('lfs') to chroot into the lfs directory, and immediately resets all the environment variables (most importantly PATH) with:
os.environ = {"PATH" : "/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/temp-tools/bin", ...other trivial stuff like HOME...}
But after the chroot, my calls of
subprocess.run([f"{build_script_path} >{log_file_path} 2>&1"], shell=True)
are failing with FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/bin/sh', even though
bin/sh in the chroot directory is a sym link to bash
there's a perfectly good copy of bash in /temp-tools/bin
calling print(os.environ) after the python chroot shows /temp-tools/bin is in PATH
I thought maybe subprocess.run is stuck using the old environment variables, before I reset them upon entering the chroot, but adding env=os.environ to subprocess.run does not help. :/ I'm stuck for now
For context if it helps, here is where the subprocess.run call gets made:
def vanilla_build(target_name, src_dir_name=None):
def f():
nonlocal src_dir_name
if src_dir_name == None:
src_dir_name = target_name
tarball_path = find_tarball(src_dir_name)
src_dir_path = tarball_path.split(".tar")[0]
if "tcl" in src_dir_path:
src_dir_path = src_dir_path.rsplit("-",1)[0]
snap1 = lfs_dir_snapshot()
os.chdir(os.environ["LFS"] + "srcs/")
subprocess.run(["tar", "-xf", tarball_path], check=True, env=os.environ)
os.chdir(src_dir_path)
build_script_path = f"{os.environ['LFS']}root/build-scripts/{target_name.replace('_','-')}.sh"
log_file_path = f"{os.environ['LFS']}logs/{target_name}"
####### The main call #######
proc = subprocess.run([f"{build_script_path} >{log_file_path} 2>&1"],
shell=True, env=os.environ)
subprocess.run(["rm", "-rf", src_dir_path], check=True)
if proc.returncode != 0:
red_print(build_script_path + " failed!")
return
tracked_file_record_path = f"{os.environ['LFS']}logs/tracked/{target_name}"
with open(tracked_file_record_path, 'w') as f:
new_files = lfs_dir_snapshot() - snap1
f.writelines('\n'.join(new_files))
f.__name__ = "build_" + target_name
return f
And how I enter the chroot:
def enter_chroot():
os.chdir(os.environ["LFS"])
os.chroot(os.environ["LFS"])
os.environ = {"HOME" : "/root",
"TERM" : os.environ["TERM"],
"PATH" : "/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/temp-tools/bin",
"LFS" : '/'}
Thank you! In the meantime I'm going to chop away as much code as possible to isolate the problem to either understand whatever I'm not getting or rewrite this question to be less context specific

How to check If Path Exists Using Fabric2.x

I am using Fabric2 version and I don't see It has exist method in it to check if folder path has existed in the remote server. Please let me know how can I achieve this in Fabric 2 http://docs.fabfile.org/en/stable/.
I have seen a similar question Check If Path Exists Using Fabric, But this is for fabric 1.x version

You can execute the test command remotely with the -d option to test if the file exist and is a directory while passing the warn parameter to the run method so the execution doesn't stop in case of a non-zero exit status code. Then the value failed on the result will be True in case that the folder doesn't exist and False otherwise.
folder = '/path/to/folder'
if c.run('test -d {}'.format(folder), warn=True).failed:
# Folder doesn't exist
c.run('mkdir {}'.format(folder))

exists method from fabric.contrib.files was moved to patchwork.files with a small signature change, so you can use it like this:
from fabric2 import Connection
from patchwork.files import exists
conn = Connection('host')
if exists(conn, SOME_REMOTE_DIR):
do_something()

The below code is to check the existence of the file (-f), just change to '-d' to check the existence of a directory.
from fabric import Connection
c = Connection(host="host")
if c.run('test -f /opt/mydata/myfile', warn=True).failed:
do.thing()
You can find it in the Fabric 2 documentation below:
https://docs.fabfile.org/en/2.5/getting-started.html?highlight=failed#bringing-it-all-together

Hi That's not so difficult, you have to use traditional python code to check if a path already exists.
from pathlib import Path
from fabric import Connection as connection, task
import os
#task
def deploy(ctx):
parent_deploy_dir = '/var/www'
deploy_dir ='/var/www/my_folder'
host = 'REMOTE_HOST'
user = 'USER'
with connection(host=host, user=user) as c:
with c.cd(parent_deploy_dir):
if not os.path.isdir(Path(deploy_dir)):
c.run('mkdir -p ' + deploy_dir)

How do I get Plone to read my pythonrc?

I am using the collective.python buildout.
I have the following .pythonrc (configured with export PYTHONSTARTUP=~/.pythonrc):
import readline
import rlcompleter
readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')
When I run Python in the shell, tab completion works. When I run Plone in debug mode it does not. Unless, I paste the contents of my .pythonrc into the Plone debug Python prompt. What am I missing here?
Note: Pasting the contents of my .pythonrc only works when I install Plone via python bootstrap.py (i.e. bootstrapping Plone buildout with collective.python Python). If I install Plone inside a virtualenv, nothing works. But at least in that scenario, the missing functionality makes sense to me (i.e. something is probably missing from the virtualenv that is required to make tab completion work.)

The instance controller uses two command-line switches; -i for interactive mode, and -c to load the Zope configuration and set up the app variable. The -c switch is what disables the PYTHONSTARTUP environment variable.
You could modify the plone.recipe.zope2instance package to run the script anyway.
In plone.recipe.zope2instance, find the plone/recipe/zope2instance/ctl.py file, alter the do_debug() method to:
def do_debug(self, arg):
interactive_startup = ("import os;"
"os.path.exists(os.environ.get('PYTHONSTARTUP', '')) "
"and execfile(os.environ['PYTHONSTARTUP']); del os;"
'import Zope2; app=Zope2.app()')
cmdline = self.get_startup_cmd(self.options.python,
interactive_startup,
pyflags = '-i', )
In fact, I like the idea of supporting PYTHONSTARTUP so much I committed that change to the recipe already, see rev 536f8fc1c4!

I do import user. This reads ~/.pythonrc.py. Note the .py extension. I have set that file as my PYTHONSTARTUP
I'll paste that file for good measure. I have cobbled it together a few years ago. Not sure if it is still the best, as I see comments about 2006 and python2.3. It does the trick though.
$ cat ~/.pythonrc.py
# See http://blog.partecs.com/2006/02/27/source-inspector/
#import pydoc
import inspect
import rlcompleter, readline
readline.parse_and_bind('tab: complete')
# def source(obj):
# """source of the obj."""
# try:
# pydoc.pipepager(inspect.getsource(obj), 'less')
# except IOError:
# pass
# From /usr/local/lib/python2.3/user.py
import os
home = os.curdir # Default
if 'HOME' in os.environ:
home = os.environ['HOME']
elif os.name == 'posix':
home = os.path.expanduser("~/")
# Make sure home always ends with a directory separator:
home = os.path.realpath(home) + os.sep
# From http://wiki.python.org/moin/PdbRcIdea
# Command line history:
histfile = home + '.pyhist'
try:
readline.read_history_file(histfile)
except IOError:
pass
import atexit
atexit.register(readline.write_history_file, histfile)
readline.set_history_length(200)
# Cleanup namespace
# del atexit
# del home
# del histfile
# del os
# del readline
# del rlcompleter

Copying a file in python : Permission denied [duplicate]

I want my Python script to copy files on Vista. When I run it from a normal cmd.exe window, no errors are generated, yet the files are NOT copied. If I run cmd.exe "as administator" and then run my script, it works fine.
This makes sense since User Account Control (UAC) normally prevents many file system actions.
Is there a way I can, from within a Python script, invoke a UAC elevation request (those dialogs that say something like "such and such app needs admin access, is this OK?")
If that's not possible, is there a way my script can at least detect that it is not elevated so it can fail gracefully?

As of 2017, an easy method to achieve this is the following:
import ctypes, sys
def is_admin():
try:
return ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin()
except:
return False
if is_admin():
# Code of your program here
else:
# Re-run the program with admin rights
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1)
If you are using Python 2.x, then you should replace the last line for:
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, u"runas", unicode(sys.executable), unicode(" ".join(sys.argv)), None, 1)
Also note that if you converted you python script into an executable file (using tools like py2exe, cx_freeze, pyinstaller) then you should use sys.argv[1:] instead of sys.argv in the fourth parameter.
Some of the advantages here are:
No external libraries required. It only uses ctypes and sys from standard library.
Works on both Python 2 and Python 3.
There is no need to modify the file resources nor creating a manifest file.
If you don't add code below if/else statement, the code won't ever be executed twice.
You can get the return value of the API call in the last line and take an action if it fails (code <= 32). Check possible return values here.
You can change the display method of the spawned process modifying the sixth parameter.
Documentation for the underlying ShellExecute call is here.

It took me a little while to get dguaraglia's answer working, so in the interest of saving others time, here's what I did to implement this idea:
import os
import sys
import win32com.shell.shell as shell
ASADMIN = 'asadmin'
if sys.argv[-1] != ASADMIN:
script = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[0])
params = ' '.join([script] + sys.argv[1:] + [ASADMIN])
shell.ShellExecuteEx(lpVerb='runas', lpFile=sys.executable, lpParameters=params)
sys.exit(0)

It seems there's no way to elevate the application privileges for a while for you to perform a particular task. Windows needs to know at the start of the program whether the application requires certain privileges, and will ask the user to confirm when the application performs any tasks that need those privileges. There are two ways to do this:
Write a manifest file that tells Windows the application might require some privileges
Run the application with elevated privileges from inside another program
This two articles explain in much more detail how this works.
What I'd do, if you don't want to write a nasty ctypes wrapper for the CreateElevatedProcess API, is use the ShellExecuteEx trick explained in the Code Project article (Pywin32 comes with a wrapper for ShellExecute). How? Something like this:
When your program starts, it checks if it has Administrator privileges, if it doesn't it runs itself using the ShellExecute trick and exits immediately, if it does, it performs the task at hand.
As you describe your program as a "script", I suppose that's enough for your needs.
Cheers.

Just adding this answer in case others are directed here by Google Search as I was.
I used the elevate module in my Python script and the script executed with Administrator Privileges in Windows 10.
https://pypi.org/project/elevate/

The following example builds on MARTIN DE LA FUENTE SAAVEDRA's excellent work and accepted answer. In particular, two enumerations are introduced. The first allows for easy specification of how an elevated program is to be opened, and the second helps when errors need to be easily identified. Please note that if you want all command line arguments passed to the new process, sys.argv[0] should probably be replaced with a function call: subprocess.list2cmdline(sys.argv).
#! /usr/bin/env python3
import ctypes
import enum
import subprocess
import sys
# Reference:
# msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762153(v=vs.85).aspx
# noinspection SpellCheckingInspection
class SW(enum.IntEnum):
HIDE = 0
MAXIMIZE = 3
MINIMIZE = 6
RESTORE = 9
SHOW = 5
SHOWDEFAULT = 10
SHOWMAXIMIZED = 3
SHOWMINIMIZED = 2
SHOWMINNOACTIVE = 7
SHOWNA = 8
SHOWNOACTIVATE = 4
SHOWNORMAL = 1
class ERROR(enum.IntEnum):
ZERO = 0
FILE_NOT_FOUND = 2
PATH_NOT_FOUND = 3
BAD_FORMAT = 11
ACCESS_DENIED = 5
ASSOC_INCOMPLETE = 27
DDE_BUSY = 30
DDE_FAIL = 29
DDE_TIMEOUT = 28
DLL_NOT_FOUND = 32
NO_ASSOC = 31
OOM = 8
SHARE = 26
def bootstrap():
if ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin():
main()
else:
# noinspection SpellCheckingInspection
hinstance = ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None,
'runas',
sys.executable,
subprocess.list2cmdline(sys.argv),
None,
SW.SHOWNORMAL
)
if hinstance <= 32:
raise RuntimeError(ERROR(hinstance))
def main():
# Your Code Here
print(input('Echo: '))
if __name__ == '__main__':
bootstrap()

Recognizing this question was asked years ago, I think a more elegant solution is offered on github by frmdstryr using his module pywinutils:
Excerpt:
import pythoncom
from win32com.shell import shell,shellcon
def copy(src,dst,flags=shellcon.FOF_NOCONFIRMATION):
""" Copy files using the built in Windows File copy dialog
Requires absolute paths. Does NOT create root destination folder if it doesn't exist.
Overwrites and is recursive by default
#see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775799(v=vs.85).aspx for flags available
"""
# #see IFileOperation
pfo = pythoncom.CoCreateInstance(shell.CLSID_FileOperation,None,pythoncom.CLSCTX_ALL,shell.IID_IFileOperation)
# Respond with Yes to All for any dialog
# #see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775799(v=vs.85).aspx
pfo.SetOperationFlags(flags)
# Set the destionation folder
dst = shell.SHCreateItemFromParsingName(dst,None,shell.IID_IShellItem)
if type(src) not in (tuple,list):
src = (src,)
for f in src:
item = shell.SHCreateItemFromParsingName(f,None,shell.IID_IShellItem)
pfo.CopyItem(item,dst) # Schedule an operation to be performed
# #see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775780(v=vs.85).aspx
success = pfo.PerformOperations()
# #see sdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775769(v=vs.85).aspx
aborted = pfo.GetAnyOperationsAborted()
return success is None and not aborted
This utilizes the COM interface and automatically indicates that admin privileges are needed with the familiar dialog prompt that you would see if you were copying into a directory where admin privileges are required and also provides the typical file progress dialog during the copy operation.

This may not completely answer your question but you could also try using the Elevate Command Powertoy in order to run the script with elevated UAC privileges.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.06.elevation.aspx
I think if you use it it would look like 'elevate python yourscript.py'

You can make a shortcut somewhere and as the target use:
python yourscript.py
then under properties and advanced select run as administrator.
When the user executes the shortcut it will ask them to elevate the application.

A variation on Jorenko's work above allows the elevated process to use the same console (but see my comment below):
def spawn_as_administrator():
""" Spawn ourself with administrator rights and wait for new process to exit
Make the new process use the same console as the old one.
Raise Exception() if we could not get a handle for the new re-run the process
Raise pywintypes.error() if we could not re-spawn
Return the exit code of the new process,
or return None if already running the second admin process. """
#pylint: disable=no-name-in-module,import-error
import win32event, win32api, win32process
import win32com.shell.shell as shell
if '--admin' in sys.argv:
return None
script = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[0])
params = ' '.join([script] + sys.argv[1:] + ['--admin'])
SEE_MASK_NO_CONSOLE = 0x00008000
SEE_MASK_NOCLOSE_PROCESS = 0x00000040
process = shell.ShellExecuteEx(lpVerb='runas', lpFile=sys.executable, lpParameters=params, fMask=SEE_MASK_NO_CONSOLE|SEE_MASK_NOCLOSE_PROCESS)
hProcess = process['hProcess']
if not hProcess:
raise Exception("Could not identify administrator process to install drivers")
# It is necessary to wait for the elevated process or else
# stdin lines are shared between 2 processes: they get one line each
INFINITE = -1
win32event.WaitForSingleObject(hProcess, INFINITE)
exitcode = win32process.GetExitCodeProcess(hProcess)
win32api.CloseHandle(hProcess)
return exitcode

This is mostly an upgrade to Jorenko's answer, that allows to use parameters with spaces in Windows, but should also work fairly well on Linux :)
Also, will work with cx_freeze or py2exe since we don't use __file__ but sys.argv[0] as executable
[EDIT]
Disclaimer: The code in this post is outdated.
I have published the elevation code as a python package.
Install with pip install command_runner
Usage:
from command_runner.elevate import elevate
def main():
"""My main function that should be elevated"""
print("Who's the administrator, now ?")
if __name__ == '__main__':
elevate(main)
[/EDIT]
import sys,ctypes,platform
def is_admin():
try:
return ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin()
except:
raise False
if __name__ == '__main__':
if platform.system() == "Windows":
if is_admin():
main(sys.argv[1:])
else:
# Re-run the program with admin rights, don't use __file__ since py2exe won't know about it
# Use sys.argv[0] as script path and sys.argv[1:] as arguments, join them as lpstr, quoting each parameter or spaces will divide parameters
lpParameters = ""
# Litteraly quote all parameters which get unquoted when passed to python
for i, item in enumerate(sys.argv[0:]):
lpParameters += '"' + item + '" '
try:
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", sys.executable, lpParameters , None, 1)
except:
sys.exit(1)
else:
main(sys.argv[1:])

For one-liners, put the code to where you need UAC.
Request UAC, if failed, keep running:
import ctypes, sys
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32 and exit()
Request UAC, if failed, exit:
import ctypes, sys
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or (ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32, exit())
Function style:
# Created by BaiJiFeiLong#gmail.com at 2022/6/24
import ctypes
import sys
def request_uac_or_skip():
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32 and sys.exit()
def request_uac_or_exit():
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or (ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32, sys.exit())

If your script always requires an Administrator's privileges then:
runas /user:Administrator "python your_script.py"

Request UAC elevation from within a Python script?

I want my Python script to copy files on Vista. When I run it from a normal cmd.exe window, no errors are generated, yet the files are NOT copied. If I run cmd.exe "as administator" and then run my script, it works fine.
This makes sense since User Account Control (UAC) normally prevents many file system actions.
Is there a way I can, from within a Python script, invoke a UAC elevation request (those dialogs that say something like "such and such app needs admin access, is this OK?")
If that's not possible, is there a way my script can at least detect that it is not elevated so it can fail gracefully?

As of 2017, an easy method to achieve this is the following:
import ctypes, sys
def is_admin():
try:
return ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin()
except:
return False
if is_admin():
# Code of your program here
else:
# Re-run the program with admin rights
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1)
If you are using Python 2.x, then you should replace the last line for:
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, u"runas", unicode(sys.executable), unicode(" ".join(sys.argv)), None, 1)
Also note that if you converted you python script into an executable file (using tools like py2exe, cx_freeze, pyinstaller) then you should use sys.argv[1:] instead of sys.argv in the fourth parameter.
Some of the advantages here are:
No external libraries required. It only uses ctypes and sys from standard library.
Works on both Python 2 and Python 3.
There is no need to modify the file resources nor creating a manifest file.
If you don't add code below if/else statement, the code won't ever be executed twice.
You can get the return value of the API call in the last line and take an action if it fails (code <= 32). Check possible return values here.
You can change the display method of the spawned process modifying the sixth parameter.
Documentation for the underlying ShellExecute call is here.

It took me a little while to get dguaraglia's answer working, so in the interest of saving others time, here's what I did to implement this idea:
import os
import sys
import win32com.shell.shell as shell
ASADMIN = 'asadmin'
if sys.argv[-1] != ASADMIN:
script = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[0])
params = ' '.join([script] + sys.argv[1:] + [ASADMIN])
shell.ShellExecuteEx(lpVerb='runas', lpFile=sys.executable, lpParameters=params)
sys.exit(0)

It seems there's no way to elevate the application privileges for a while for you to perform a particular task. Windows needs to know at the start of the program whether the application requires certain privileges, and will ask the user to confirm when the application performs any tasks that need those privileges. There are two ways to do this:
Write a manifest file that tells Windows the application might require some privileges
Run the application with elevated privileges from inside another program
This two articles explain in much more detail how this works.
What I'd do, if you don't want to write a nasty ctypes wrapper for the CreateElevatedProcess API, is use the ShellExecuteEx trick explained in the Code Project article (Pywin32 comes with a wrapper for ShellExecute). How? Something like this:
When your program starts, it checks if it has Administrator privileges, if it doesn't it runs itself using the ShellExecute trick and exits immediately, if it does, it performs the task at hand.
As you describe your program as a "script", I suppose that's enough for your needs.
Cheers.

Just adding this answer in case others are directed here by Google Search as I was.
I used the elevate module in my Python script and the script executed with Administrator Privileges in Windows 10.
https://pypi.org/project/elevate/

The following example builds on MARTIN DE LA FUENTE SAAVEDRA's excellent work and accepted answer. In particular, two enumerations are introduced. The first allows for easy specification of how an elevated program is to be opened, and the second helps when errors need to be easily identified. Please note that if you want all command line arguments passed to the new process, sys.argv[0] should probably be replaced with a function call: subprocess.list2cmdline(sys.argv).
#! /usr/bin/env python3
import ctypes
import enum
import subprocess
import sys
# Reference:
# msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762153(v=vs.85).aspx
# noinspection SpellCheckingInspection
class SW(enum.IntEnum):
HIDE = 0
MAXIMIZE = 3
MINIMIZE = 6
RESTORE = 9
SHOW = 5
SHOWDEFAULT = 10
SHOWMAXIMIZED = 3
SHOWMINIMIZED = 2
SHOWMINNOACTIVE = 7
SHOWNA = 8
SHOWNOACTIVATE = 4
SHOWNORMAL = 1
class ERROR(enum.IntEnum):
ZERO = 0
FILE_NOT_FOUND = 2
PATH_NOT_FOUND = 3
BAD_FORMAT = 11
ACCESS_DENIED = 5
ASSOC_INCOMPLETE = 27
DDE_BUSY = 30
DDE_FAIL = 29
DDE_TIMEOUT = 28
DLL_NOT_FOUND = 32
NO_ASSOC = 31
OOM = 8
SHARE = 26
def bootstrap():
if ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin():
main()
else:
# noinspection SpellCheckingInspection
hinstance = ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None,
'runas',
sys.executable,
subprocess.list2cmdline(sys.argv),
None,
SW.SHOWNORMAL
)
if hinstance <= 32:
raise RuntimeError(ERROR(hinstance))
def main():
# Your Code Here
print(input('Echo: '))
if __name__ == '__main__':
bootstrap()

Recognizing this question was asked years ago, I think a more elegant solution is offered on github by frmdstryr using his module pywinutils:
Excerpt:
import pythoncom
from win32com.shell import shell,shellcon
def copy(src,dst,flags=shellcon.FOF_NOCONFIRMATION):
""" Copy files using the built in Windows File copy dialog
Requires absolute paths. Does NOT create root destination folder if it doesn't exist.
Overwrites and is recursive by default
#see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775799(v=vs.85).aspx for flags available
"""
# #see IFileOperation
pfo = pythoncom.CoCreateInstance(shell.CLSID_FileOperation,None,pythoncom.CLSCTX_ALL,shell.IID_IFileOperation)
# Respond with Yes to All for any dialog
# #see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775799(v=vs.85).aspx
pfo.SetOperationFlags(flags)
# Set the destionation folder
dst = shell.SHCreateItemFromParsingName(dst,None,shell.IID_IShellItem)
if type(src) not in (tuple,list):
src = (src,)
for f in src:
item = shell.SHCreateItemFromParsingName(f,None,shell.IID_IShellItem)
pfo.CopyItem(item,dst) # Schedule an operation to be performed
# #see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775780(v=vs.85).aspx
success = pfo.PerformOperations()
# #see sdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb775769(v=vs.85).aspx
aborted = pfo.GetAnyOperationsAborted()
return success is None and not aborted
This utilizes the COM interface and automatically indicates that admin privileges are needed with the familiar dialog prompt that you would see if you were copying into a directory where admin privileges are required and also provides the typical file progress dialog during the copy operation.

This may not completely answer your question but you could also try using the Elevate Command Powertoy in order to run the script with elevated UAC privileges.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.06.elevation.aspx
I think if you use it it would look like 'elevate python yourscript.py'

You can make a shortcut somewhere and as the target use:
python yourscript.py
then under properties and advanced select run as administrator.
When the user executes the shortcut it will ask them to elevate the application.

A variation on Jorenko's work above allows the elevated process to use the same console (but see my comment below):
def spawn_as_administrator():
""" Spawn ourself with administrator rights and wait for new process to exit
Make the new process use the same console as the old one.
Raise Exception() if we could not get a handle for the new re-run the process
Raise pywintypes.error() if we could not re-spawn
Return the exit code of the new process,
or return None if already running the second admin process. """
#pylint: disable=no-name-in-module,import-error
import win32event, win32api, win32process
import win32com.shell.shell as shell
if '--admin' in sys.argv:
return None
script = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[0])
params = ' '.join([script] + sys.argv[1:] + ['--admin'])
SEE_MASK_NO_CONSOLE = 0x00008000
SEE_MASK_NOCLOSE_PROCESS = 0x00000040
process = shell.ShellExecuteEx(lpVerb='runas', lpFile=sys.executable, lpParameters=params, fMask=SEE_MASK_NO_CONSOLE|SEE_MASK_NOCLOSE_PROCESS)
hProcess = process['hProcess']
if not hProcess:
raise Exception("Could not identify administrator process to install drivers")
# It is necessary to wait for the elevated process or else
# stdin lines are shared between 2 processes: they get one line each
INFINITE = -1
win32event.WaitForSingleObject(hProcess, INFINITE)
exitcode = win32process.GetExitCodeProcess(hProcess)
win32api.CloseHandle(hProcess)
return exitcode

This is mostly an upgrade to Jorenko's answer, that allows to use parameters with spaces in Windows, but should also work fairly well on Linux :)
Also, will work with cx_freeze or py2exe since we don't use __file__ but sys.argv[0] as executable
[EDIT]
Disclaimer: The code in this post is outdated.
I have published the elevation code as a python package.
Install with pip install command_runner
Usage:
from command_runner.elevate import elevate
def main():
"""My main function that should be elevated"""
print("Who's the administrator, now ?")
if __name__ == '__main__':
elevate(main)
[/EDIT]
import sys,ctypes,platform
def is_admin():
try:
return ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin()
except:
raise False
if __name__ == '__main__':
if platform.system() == "Windows":
if is_admin():
main(sys.argv[1:])
else:
# Re-run the program with admin rights, don't use __file__ since py2exe won't know about it
# Use sys.argv[0] as script path and sys.argv[1:] as arguments, join them as lpstr, quoting each parameter or spaces will divide parameters
lpParameters = ""
# Litteraly quote all parameters which get unquoted when passed to python
for i, item in enumerate(sys.argv[0:]):
lpParameters += '"' + item + '" '
try:
ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(None, "runas", sys.executable, lpParameters , None, 1)
except:
sys.exit(1)
else:
main(sys.argv[1:])

For one-liners, put the code to where you need UAC.
Request UAC, if failed, keep running:
import ctypes, sys
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32 and exit()
Request UAC, if failed, exit:
import ctypes, sys
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or (ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32, exit())
Function style:
# Created by BaiJiFeiLong#gmail.com at 2022/6/24
import ctypes
import sys
def request_uac_or_skip():
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32 and sys.exit()
def request_uac_or_exit():
ctypes.windll.shell32.IsUserAnAdmin() or (ctypes.windll.shell32.ShellExecuteW(
None, "runas", sys.executable, " ".join(sys.argv), None, 1) > 32, sys.exit())

If your script always requires an Administrator's privileges then:
runas /user:Administrator "python your_script.py"