In a Python script I was calling from a webpage residing on an Apache webserver, I was unable to copy a file whose location and file name were stored in the variable countfile to another file whose name and location were stored in the variable backupfile with any of the following lines of code:

The backup file should be stored in the same directory as countfile using the same name, but with ".bak" appended to the file name. I wasn't able to identify the cause of the problem when I just used except to print my own error message with the code below, since all I would see in the output was "Error! Unable to make a backup copy of the input file."

import shutil

backupfile = countfile + ".bak"

try:
   # Make a backup copy of the prior file
   shutil.copy(countfile, backupfile)
except e:
   print "Error! Unable to make a backup copy of the input file."
   sys.exit(1)

But the explicit Python error message can be obtained by using except Exception, e as shown below:

try:
   shutil.copy(countfile, backupfile)
except Exception,e:
   print str(e)
   print "Error! Unable to make a backup copy of the input file."
   sys.exit(1)

When I used that code, instead, I saw the following output for the error, which showed that the problem was with the creation of the backup file:

[Errno 13] Permission denied: '/Users/jasmith1/Documents/www/SGRS/data/SGRS_Count.csv.bak'
Error! Unable to make a backup copy of the input file.

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