linux - subprocess.Popen(): OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error in python?

Question

Yesterday, I wrote and ran a python script which executes a shell using subprocess.Popen(command.split()) where command is string which constitutes .sh script and its argument. This script was working fine until yesterday. Today, I ran the same script and now I am continuously hitting this error.

p=subprocess.Popen(shell_command.split())
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 679, in __init__
errread, errwrite)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 1249, in _execute_child
raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error

I know there are similar questions that have been asked before related to this question, but in my case I tried everything which doesn't solve my purpose. Using shell=True does not work because my shell script calls an another shell script before which some environment has to be set in order to run that script. I am badly stuck in this. I just restart my system once. I am using ubuntu 12.04

EDIT:

 import subprocess
 import os
 import sys

 arg1=sys.argv[1]
 arg2=sys.argve[2]

 shell_command = 'my_path/my_shell.sh ' + arg1 + ' '+ arg2
 P = subprocess.Popen(shell_command.split())
 P.wait()

my_shell.sh:

  arg1=$1
  arg2=$2

  cd $TOP
  setup the environment and run shell script
  build the kernel ...
  execute shell command .....

Answer 1

I solved this by putting this line at the top of the called shell script:

#!/bin/sh

That will guarantee that the system always uses the correct interpreter when running your script.