Ensuring subprocesses are dead on exiting Python program

Question

Is there a way to ensure all created subprocess are dead at exit time of a Python program? By subprocess I mean those created with subprocess.Popen().

If not, should

Answer 1

Find out a solution for linux (without installing prctl):

def _set_pdeathsig(sig=signal.SIGTERM):
    """help function to ensure once parent process exits, its childrent processes will automatically die
    """
    def callable():
        libc = ctypes.CDLL("libc.so.6")
        return libc.prctl(1, sig)
    return callable


subprocess.Popen(your_command, preexec_fn=_set_pdeathsig(signal.SIGTERM)) 

Answer 2

orip's answer is helpful but has the downside that it kills your process and returns an error code your parent. I avoided that like this:

class CleanChildProcesses:
  def __enter__(self):
    os.setpgrp() # create new process group, become its leader
  def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
    try:
      os.killpg(0, signal.SIGINT) # kill all processes in my group
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
      # SIGINT is delievered to this process as well as the child processes.
      # Ignore it so that the existing exception, if any, is returned. This
      # leaves us with a clean exit code if there was no exception.
      pass

And then:

  with CleanChildProcesses():
    # Do your work here

Of course you can do this with try/except/finally but you have to handle the exceptional and non-exceptional cases separately.

Answer 3

You can try subalive, a package I wrote for similar problem. It uses periodic alive ping via RPC, and the slave process automatically terminates when the master stops alive pings for some reason.

https://github.com/waszil/subalive

Example for master:

from subalive import SubAliveMaster

# start subprocess with alive keeping
SubAliveMaster(<path to your slave script>)

# do your stuff
# ...

Example for slave subprocess:

from subalive import SubAliveSlave

# start alive checking
SubAliveSlave()

# do your stuff
# ...

Answer 4

You can use atexit for this, and register any clean up tasks to be run when your program exits.

atexit.register(func[, *args[, **kargs]])

In your cleanup process, you can also implement your own wait, and kill it when a your desired timeout occurs.

>>> import atexit
>>> import sys
>>> import time
>>> 
>>> 
>>>
>>> def cleanup():
...     timeout_sec = 5
...     for p in all_processes: # list of your processes
...         p_sec = 0
...         for second in range(timeout_sec):
...             if p.poll() == None:
...                 time.sleep(1)
...                 p_sec += 1
...         if p_sec >= timeout_sec:
...             p.kill() # supported from python 2.6
...     print 'cleaned up!'
...
>>>
>>> atexit.register(cleanup)
>>>
>>> sys.exit()
cleaned up!

Note -- Registered functions won't be run if this process (parent process) is killed.

The following windows method is no longer needed for python >= 2.6

Here's a way to kill a process in windows. Your Popen object has a pid attribute, so you can just call it by success = win_kill(p.pid) (Needs pywin32 installed):

    def win_kill(pid):
        '''kill a process by specified PID in windows'''
        import win32api
        import win32con

        hProc = None
        try:
            hProc = win32api.OpenProcess(win32con.PROCESS_TERMINATE, 0, pid)
            win32api.TerminateProcess(hProc, 0)
        except Exception:
            return False
        finally:
            if hProc != None:
                hProc.Close()

        return True

Answer 5

Warning: Linux-only! You can make your child receive a signal when its parent dies.

First install python-prctl==1.5.0 then change your parent code to launch your child processes as follows

subprocess.Popen(["sleep", "100"], preexec_fn=lambda: prctl.set_pdeathsig(signal.SIGKILL))

What this says is:

• launch subprocess: sleep 100
• after forking and before exec of the subprocess, the child registers for "send me a SIGKILL when my parent terminates".

Answer 6

I actually needed to do this, but it involved running remote commands. We wanted to be able to stop the processes by closing the connection to the server. Also, if, for example, you are running in the python repl, you can select to run as foreground if you want to be able to use Ctrl-C to exit.

import os, signal, time

class CleanChildProcesses:
    """
    with CleanChildProcesses():
        Do work here
    """
    def __init__(self, time_to_die=5, foreground=False):
        self.time_to_die = time_to_die  # how long to give children to die before SIGKILL
        self.foreground = foreground  # If user wants to receive Ctrl-C
        self.is_foreground = False
        self.SIGNALS = (signal.SIGHUP, signal.SIGTERM, signal.SIGABRT, signal.SIGALRM, signal.SIGPIPE)
        self.is_stopped = True  # only call stop once (catch signal xor exiting 'with')

    def _run_as_foreground(self):
        if not self.foreground:
            return False
        try:
            fd = os.open(os.ctermid(), os.O_RDWR)
        except OSError:
            # Happens if process not run from terminal (tty, pty)
            return False

        os.close(fd)
        return True

    def _signal_hdlr(self, sig, framte):
        self.__exit__(None, None, None)

    def start(self):
        self.is_stopped = False
        """
        When running out of remote shell, SIGHUP is only sent to the session
        leader normally, the remote shell, so we need to make sure we are sent 
        SIGHUP. This also allows us not to kill ourselves with SIGKILL.
        - A process group is called orphaned when the parent of every member is 
            either in the process group or outside the session. In particular, 
            the process group of the session leader is always orphaned.
        - If termination of a process causes a process group to become orphaned, 
            and some member is stopped, then all are sent first SIGHUP and then 
            SIGCONT.
        consider: prctl.set_pdeathsig(signal.SIGTERM)
        """
        self.childpid = os.fork()  # return 0 in the child branch, and the childpid in the parent branch
        if self.childpid == 0:
            try:
                os.setpgrp()  # create new process group, become its leader
                os.kill(os.getpid(), signal.SIGSTOP)  # child fork stops itself
            finally:
                os._exit(0)  # shut down without going to __exit__

        os.waitpid(self.childpid, os.WUNTRACED)  # wait until child stopped after it created the process group
        os.setpgid(0, self.childpid)  # join child's group

        if self._run_as_foreground():
            hdlr = signal.signal(signal.SIGTTOU, signal.SIG_IGN)  # ignore since would cause this process to stop
            self.controlling_terminal = os.open(os.ctermid(), os.O_RDWR)
            self.orig_fore_pg = os.tcgetpgrp(self.controlling_terminal)  # sends SIGTTOU to this process
            os.tcsetpgrp(self.controlling_terminal, self.childpid)
            signal.signal(signal.SIGTTOU, hdlr)
            self.is_foreground = True

        self.exit_signals = dict((s, signal.signal(s, self._signal_hdlr))
                                 for s in self.SIGNALS)                                     

    def stop(self):
        try:
            for s in self.SIGNALS:
                #don't get interrupted while cleaning everything up
                signal.signal(s, signal.SIG_IGN)

            self.is_stopped = True

            if self.is_foreground:
                os.tcsetpgrp(self.controlling_terminal, self.orig_fore_pg)
                os.close(self.controlling_terminal)
                self.is_foreground = False

            try:
                os.kill(self.childpid, signal.SIGCONT)
            except OSError:
                """
                can occur if process finished and one of:
                - was reaped by another process
                - if parent explicitly ignored SIGCHLD
                    signal.signal(signal.SIGCHLD, signal.SIG_IGN)
                - parent has the SA_NOCLDWAIT flag set 
                """
                pass

            os.setpgrp()  # leave the child's process group so I won't get signals
            try:
                os.killpg(self.childpid, signal.SIGINT)
                time.sleep(self.time_to_die)  # let processes end gracefully
                os.killpg(self.childpid, signal.SIGKILL)  # In case process gets stuck while dying
                os.waitpid(self.childpid, 0)  # reap Zombie child process
            except OSError as e:
                pass
        finally:
            for s, hdlr in self.exit_signals.iteritems():
                signal.signal(s, hdlr)  # reset default handlers

    def __enter__(self):
        if self.is_stopped:
            self.start()

    def __exit__(self, exit_type, value, traceback):
        if not self.is_stopped:
            self.stop()

Thanks to Malcolm Handley for the initial design. Done with python2.7 on linux.