We Keep Coding

How to restart a Python script?

In a program I am writing in python I need to completely restart the program if a variable becomes true, looking for a while I found this command:
while True:
if reboot == True:
os.execv(sys.argv[0], sys.argv)
When executed it returns the error [Errno 8] Exec format error. I searched for further documentation on os.execv, but didn't find anything relevant, so my question is if anyone knows what I did wrong or knows a better way to restart a script (by restarting I mean completely re-running the script, as if it were been opened for the first time, so with all unassigned variables and no thread running).

There are multiple ways to achieve the same thing. Start by modifying the program to exit whenever the flag turns True. Then there are various options, each one with its advantages and disadvantages.
Wrap it using a bash script.
The script should handle exits and restart your program. A really basic version could be:
#!/bin/bash
while :
do
python program.py
sleep 1
done
Start the program as a sub-process of another program.
Start by wrapping your program's code to a function. Then your __main__ could look like this:
def program():
### Here is the code of your program
...
while True:
from multiprocessing import Process
process = Process(target=program)
process.start()
process.join()
print("Restarting...")
This code is relatively basic, and it requires error handling to be implemented.
Use a process manager
There are a lot of tools available that can monitor the process, run multiple processes in parallel and automatically restart stopped processes. It's worth having a look at PM2 or similar.
IMHO the third option (process manager) looks like the safest approach. The other approaches will have edge cases and require implementation from your side to handle edge cases.

This has worked for me. Please add the shebang at the top of your code and os.execv() as shown below
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import sys
if __name__ == '__main__':
while True:
reboot = input('Enter:')
if reboot == '1':
sys.stdout.flush()
os.execv(sys.executable, [sys.executable, __file__] + [sys.argv[0]])
else:
print('OLD')

I got the same "Exec Format Error", and I believe it is basically the same error you get when you simply type a python script name at the command prompt and expect it to execute. On linux it won't work because a path is required, and the execv method is basically encountering the same error.
You could add the pathname of your python compiler, and that error goes away, except that the name of your script then becomes a parameter and must be added to the argv list. To avoid that, make your script independently executable by adding "#!/usr/bin/python3" to the top of the script AND chmod 755.
This works for me:
#!/usr/bin/python3
# this script is called foo.py
import os
import sys
import time
if (len(sys.argv) >= 2):
Arg1 = int(sys.argv[1])
else:
sys.argv.append(None)
Arg1 = 1
print(f"Arg1: {Arg1}")
sys.argv[1] = str(Arg1 + 1)
time.sleep(3)
os.execv("./foo.py", sys.argv)
Output:
Arg1: 1
Arg1: 2
Arg1: 3
.
.
.

Python subprocess shell scripts still runs in background

I am running two python scripts using subprocess one of them still runs.
import subprocess
subprocess.run("python3 script_with_loop.py & python3 scrip_with_io.py", shell=True)
script_with_loop still runs in the background.
What is the way to kill both scripts if one of them dies?

So, you're basically not using python here, you're using your shell.
a & b runs a, disavows it, and runs b. Since you're using the shell, if you wanted to terminate the background task, you'd have to use shell commands to do that.
Of course, since you're using python, there is a better way.
with subprocess.Popen(["somecommand"]) as proc:
try:
subprocess.run(["othercommand"])
finally:
proc.terminate()
Looking at your code though - python3 script_with_loop.py and python3 script_with_io.py - my guess is you'd be better off using the asyncio module because it basically does what the names of those two files are describing.

you should use threading for this sort of thing. try this.
import threading
def script_with_loop():
try:
# script_with_loop.py code goes here
except:
_exit()
def script_with_io():
try:
# script_with_io.py code goes here
except:
_exit()
threading.Thread(target=script_with_loop, daemon=True).start()
threading.Thread(target=script_with_io, daemon=True).start()

Python subprocess always waits for programm [duplicate]

I'm trying to port a shell script to the much more readable python version. The original shell script starts several processes (utilities, monitors, etc.) in the background with "&". How can I achieve the same effect in python? I'd like these processes not to die when the python scripts complete. I am sure it's related to the concept of a daemon somehow, but I couldn't find how to do this easily.

While jkp's solution works, the newer way of doing things (and the way the documentation recommends) is to use the subprocess module. For simple commands its equivalent, but it offers more options if you want to do something complicated.
Example for your case:
import subprocess
subprocess.Popen(["rm","-r","some.file"])
This will run rm -r some.file in the background. Note that calling .communicate() on the object returned from Popen will block until it completes, so don't do that if you want it to run in the background:
import subprocess
ls_output=subprocess.Popen(["sleep", "30"])
ls_output.communicate() # Will block for 30 seconds
See the documentation here.
Also, a point of clarification: "Background" as you use it here is purely a shell concept; technically, what you mean is that you want to spawn a process without blocking while you wait for it to complete. However, I've used "background" here to refer to shell-background-like behavior.

Note: This answer is less current than it was when posted in 2009. Using the subprocess module shown in other answers is now recommended in the docs
(Note that the subprocess module provides more powerful facilities for spawning new processes and retrieving their results; using that module is preferable to using these functions.)
If you want your process to start in the background you can either use system() and call it in the same way your shell script did, or you can spawn it:
import os
os.spawnl(os.P_DETACH, 'some_long_running_command')
(or, alternatively, you may try the less portable os.P_NOWAIT flag).
See the documentation here.

You probably want the answer to "How to call an external command in Python".
The simplest approach is to use the os.system function, e.g.:
import os
os.system("some_command &")
Basically, whatever you pass to the system function will be executed the same as if you'd passed it to the shell in a script.

I found this here:
On windows (win xp), the parent process will not finish until the longtask.py has finished its work. It is not what you want in CGI-script. The problem is not specific to Python, in PHP community the problems are the same.
The solution is to pass DETACHED_PROCESS Process Creation Flag to the underlying CreateProcess function in win API. If you happen to have installed pywin32 you can import the flag from the win32process module, otherwise you should define it yourself:
DETACHED_PROCESS = 0x00000008
pid = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable, "longtask.py"],
creationflags=DETACHED_PROCESS).pid

Use subprocess.Popen() with the close_fds=True parameter, which will allow the spawned subprocess to be detached from the Python process itself and continue running even after Python exits.
https://gist.github.com/yinjimmy/d6ad0742d03d54518e9f
import os, time, sys, subprocess
if len(sys.argv) == 2:
time.sleep(5)
print 'track end'
if sys.platform == 'darwin':
subprocess.Popen(['say', 'hello'])
else:
print 'main begin'
subprocess.Popen(['python', os.path.realpath(__file__), '0'], close_fds=True)
print 'main end'

Both capture output and run on background with threading
As mentioned on this answer, if you capture the output with stdout= and then try to read(), then the process blocks.
However, there are cases where you need this. For example, I wanted to launch two processes that talk over a port between them, and save their stdout to a log file and stdout.
The threading module allows us to do that.
First, have a look at how to do the output redirection part alone in this question: Python Popen: Write to stdout AND log file simultaneously
Then:
main.py
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import subprocess
import sys
import threading
def output_reader(proc, file):
while True:
byte = proc.stdout.read(1)
if byte:
sys.stdout.buffer.write(byte)
sys.stdout.flush()
file.buffer.write(byte)
else:
break
with subprocess.Popen(['./sleep.py', '0'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE) as proc1, \
subprocess.Popen(['./sleep.py', '10'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE) as proc2, \
open('log1.log', 'w') as file1, \
open('log2.log', 'w') as file2:
t1 = threading.Thread(target=output_reader, args=(proc1, file1))
t2 = threading.Thread(target=output_reader, args=(proc2, file2))
t1.start()
t2.start()
t1.join()
t2.join()
sleep.py
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
import time
for i in range(4):
print(i + int(sys.argv[1]))
sys.stdout.flush()
time.sleep(0.5)
After running:
./main.py
stdout get updated every 0.5 seconds for every two lines to contain:
0
10
1
11
2
12
3
13
and each log file contains the respective log for a given process.
Inspired by: https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2017/interacting-with-a-long-running-child-process-in-python/
Tested on Ubuntu 18.04, Python 3.6.7.

You probably want to start investigating the os module for forking different threads (by opening an interactive session and issuing help(os)). The relevant functions are fork and any of the exec ones. To give you an idea on how to start, put something like this in a function that performs the fork (the function needs to take a list or tuple 'args' as an argument that contains the program's name and its parameters; you may also want to define stdin, out and err for the new thread):
try:
pid = os.fork()
except OSError, e:
## some debug output
sys.exit(1)
if pid == 0:
## eventually use os.putenv(..) to set environment variables
## os.execv strips of args[0] for the arguments
os.execv(args[0], args)

You can use
import os
pid = os.fork()
if pid == 0:
Continue to other code ...
This will make the python process run in background.

I haven't tried this yet but using .pyw files instead of .py files should help. pyw files dosen't have a console so in theory it should not appear and work like a background process.

Is on Python 3 any library to relaunch the script?

I have some script in Python, which does some work. I want to re-run this script automatically. Also, I want to relaunch it on any crashes/freezes.
I can do something like this:
while True:
try:
main()
except Exception:
os.execv(sys.executable, ['python'] + sys.argv)
But, for unknown reason, this still crashes or freezes one time in few days. So I see crash, write "Python main.py" in cmd and it started, so I don't know why os.execv don't do this work by self. I guess it's because this code is part of this app. So, I prefer some script/app, which will control relaunch in external way. I hope it will be more stable.
So this script should work in this way:
Start any script
Check that process of this script is working, for example check some file time change and control it by process name|ID|etc.
When it dissapears from process list, launch it again
When file changed more than 5 minutes ago, stop process, wait few sec, launch it again.
In general: be cross-platform (Linux/Windows)
not important log all crashes.
I can do this by self (right now working on it), but I'm pretty sure something like this must already be done by somebody, I just can't find it in Google\Github.
UPDATE: added code from the #hansaplast answer to GitHub. Also added some changes to it: relauncher. Feel free to copy/use it.

As it needs to work both in windows and on linux I don't know a way to do that with standard tools, so here's a DIY solution:
from subprocess import Popen
import os
import time
# change into scripts directory
abspath = os.path.abspath(__file__)
dname = os.path.dirname(abspath)
os.chdir(dname)
while True:
p = Popen(['python', 'my_script.py', 'arg1', 'arg2'])
time.sleep(20) # give the program some time to write into logfile
while True:
if p.poll() != None:
print('crashed or regularly terminated')
break
file_age_in_s = time.time() - os.path.getmtime('output.log')
if file_age_in_s > 60:
print('frozen, killing process')
p.kill()
break
time.sleep(1)
print('restarting..')
Explanation:
time.sleep(20): give script 20 seconds to write into the log file
poll(): regularly check if script died (either crashed or regularly terminated, you can check the return value of poll() to differentiate that)
getmtime(): regularly check output.log and check if that was changed the past 60 seconds
time.sleep(1): between every check wait for 1s as otherwise it would eat up too many system resources
The script assumes that the check-script and the run-script are in the same directory. If that is not the case, change the lines beneath "change into scripts directory"

I personally like supervisor daemon, but it has two issues here:
It is only for unix systems
It restarts app only on crashes, not freezes.
But it has simple XML-RPC API, so It makes your job to write an freeze-watchdog app simplier. You could just start your process under supervisor and restart it via supervisor API when you see it freezes.
You could install it via apt install supervisor on ubuntu and write config like this:
[program:main]
user=vladimir
command=python3 /var/local/main/main.py
process_name=%(program_name)s
directory=/var/local/main
autostart=true
autorestart=true

How to kill headless X server started via Python?

I want to get screenshots of a webpage in Python. For this I am using http://github.com/AdamN/python-webkit2png/ .
newArgs = ["xvfb-run", "--server-args=-screen 0, 640x480x24", sys.argv[0]]
for i in range(1, len(sys.argv)):
if sys.argv[i] not in ["-x", "--xvfb"]:
newArgs.append(sys.argv[i])
logging.debug("Executing %s" % " ".join(newArgs))
os.execvp(newArgs[0], newArgs)
Basically calls xvfb-run with the correct args. But man xvfb says:
Note that the demo X clients used in the above examples will not exit on their own, so they will have to be killed before xvfb-run will exit.
So that means that this script will <????> if this whole thing is in a loop, (To get multiple screenshots) unless the X server is killed. How can I do that?

The documentation for os.execvp states:
These functions all execute a new
program, replacing the current
process; they do not return. [..]
So after calling os.execvp no other statement in the program will be executed. You may want to use subprocess.Popen instead:
The subprocess module allows you to
spawn new processes, connect to their
input/output/error pipes, and obtain
their return codes. This module
intends to replace several other,
older modules and functions, such as:
Using subprocess.Popen, the code to run xlogo in the virtual framebuffer X server becomes:
import subprocess
xvfb_args = ['xvfb-run', '--server-args=-screen 0, 640x480x24', 'xlogo']
process = subprocess.Popen(xvfb_args)
Now the problem is that xvfb-run launches Xvfb in a background process. Calling process.kill() will not kill Xvfb (at least not on my machine...). I have been fiddling around with this a bit, and so far the only thing that works for me is:
import os
import signal
import subprocess
SERVER_NUM = 99 # 99 is the default used by xvfb-run; you can leave this out.
xvfb_args = ['xvfb-run', '--server-num=%d' % SERVER_NUM,
'--server-args=-screen 0, 640x480x24', 'xlogo']
subprocess.Popen(xvfb_args)
# ... do whatever you want to do here...
pid = int(open('/tmp/.X%s-lock' % SERVER_NUM).read().strip())
os.kill(pid, signal.SIGINT)
So this code reads the process ID of Xvfb from /tmp/.X99-lock and sends the process an interrupt. It works, but does yield an error message every now and then (I suppose you can ignore it, though). Hopefully somebody else can provide a more elegant solution. Cheers.