# You can use following commands to run any shell command. I have used them on ubuntu.
import os
os.popen('your command here').read()
# Note: This is deprecated since python 2.6. Now you must use subprocess.Popen. Below is the example
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen("Your command", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
print p.split("
")