title: Python OSError no 7 (Argument list too long ) in linux
body: <p>I am trying to open a new subprocess which will take a few input files and generate the output in other file. While this runs cleanly most of the times, when I am trying to do some stress testing this fails and gives me the following error trace:</p>
  
  <pre><code>File "/home/admin/Workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.pde.core/pde-junit/org.eclipse.osgipython/util/media_info.py", line 161, in external_process
  
      process = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=shell, close_fds=True, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
  
    File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 623, in __init__
      errread, errwrite)
  
    File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 1141, in _execute_child
      raise child_exception
  
  OSError: [Errno 7] Argument list too long
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Initially I thought that the command that I was passing(it was the absolute path of 4 files) was longer than the OS could support. But even after reducing the absolute path passed to 1/4th of the original value. I still get this error. Please note that I don't get this error all the time. Mostly its after a 1000 or more runs while the path length remains the same for all cases.</p>