How can I cause a child process to exit when the parent does?

Question

I am launching a child process with ProcessBuilder, and need the child process to exit if the parent process does. Under normal circumstances, my code is stopping the child

Answer 1

As you've found the operating system allows you to get around this issue. Instead, create a resource shared by both processes. When the parent aborts the resource, the child reacts by shutting down. For example:

Create a thread with an server-side TCP/IP socket in accept mode on the parent on a random high number port. When the child starts, pass the port number as a parameter (environment variable, database entry, whatever). Have it create a thread and open that socket. The have the thread sit on the socket forever. If the connection ever drops, have the child exit.

or

Create a thread on parent that continually updates the update date on a file. (How often depends on how much granularity between kill and shutdown you need.) The child has a thread that monitors the update time of the same file. If it doesn't update after a specific interval, automatically shutdown.

Answer 2

Provide a hacker way which is similar with the answer from @tomkri and also provide the demo code.

If your child process do not need use input stream, just redirect child process input stream to its parent process's input stream. Then add a thread in child to always read input stream and when this thread can not read anything from input stream, this child process exits. So the parent process exits -> parent's input stream does not exist -> child's input stream does not exist -> child process exits.

Here is the demo code all in Java.

Parent Process:

package process.parent_child;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.lang.ProcessBuilder.Redirect;

public class ParentProc {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("I'm parent.");

        String javaHome = System.getProperty("java.home");
        String javaBin = javaHome + File.separator + "bin" + File.separator + "java";
        ProcessBuilder builder = new ProcessBuilder(javaBin, "process.parent_child.ChildProc");

        // Redirect subprocess's input stream to this parent process's input stream.
        builder.redirectInput(Redirect.INHERIT);
        // This is just for see the output of child process much more easily.
        builder.redirectOutput(Redirect.INHERIT);
        try {
            Process process = builder.start();
            Thread.sleep(5000);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        System.out.println("Parent exits.");
    }
}

Child Process:

package process.parent_child;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class ChildProc {


    private static class StdinListenerThread extends Thread {

        public void run() {
            int c;
            try {
                c = System.in.read();
                while ( c != -1 ) {
                    System.out.print(c);
                }
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            System.out.println("\nChild exits.");
            System.exit(0);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        System.out.println("I'm child process.");
        StdinListenerThread thread = new StdinListenerThread();
        thread.start();
        Thread.sleep(10000);
    }
}

After run this parent process by the following command:

    java process.parent_child.ParentProc

You will see

    I'm parent.
    I'm child process.
    Parent exits.
    xmpy-mbp:bin zhaoxm$
    Child exits

Child process exits immediately when parent process exits.

Answer 3

While you cannot protect against a hard abort (e.g. SIGKILL on Unix), you can protect against other signals that cause your parent process to shut down (e.g. SIGINT) and clean up your child process. You can accomplish this through use of shutdown hooks: see Runtime#addShutdownHook, as well as a related SO question here.

Your code might look something like this:

String[] command;
final Process childProcess = new ProcessBuilder(command).start();

Thread closeChildThread = new Thread() {
    public void run() {
        childProcess.destroy();
    }
};

Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(closeChildThread); 

Answer 4

As I tested, if the parent is killed, then the ppid of a child will become 1. So probably we can kill any processes that have ppid = 1.

Answer 5

There is no tie between a child process and its parent. They may know each others process ID, but there's no hard connection between them. What you're talking about a orphan process. And it's an OS level concern. Meaning any solution is probably platform dependent.

About the only thing I can think of is to have the child check its parents status periodically, exiting if the parent's shutdown. I don't think this would be all that reliable though.

Answer 6

You can simply start a thread reading from System.in in the child process. If you are not writing to stdin of your child, nobody else will do and the thread will block "forever". But you will get an EOF (or an exception), if the parent process is killed or dies otherwise. So you can shutdown the child as well. (Child process started with java.lang.ProcessBuilder)