Python run system command and then exit... won't exit - python

I have the following python code:
os.system("C:/Python27/python.exe C:/GUI/TestGUI.py")
sys.exit(0)
It runs the command fine, and a window pops up. However, it doesn't exit the first script. It just stays there, and I eventually have to force kill the process. No errors are produced. What's going on?

instead of os.system use subprocess.Popen
this runs a command and doesn't wait for it and then exits:
import subprocess
import sys
subprocess.Popen(["mupdf", "/home/dan/Desktop/Sieve-JFP.pdf"])
sys.exit(0)
note that os.system(command) like:
p = subprocess.Popen(command)
p.wait()

KeyboardInterrupts and signals are only seen by the process (ie the main thread). If your nested command hangs due to some kind of file read or write block, you won't be able to quit the program using any keyboard commands.
Why does a read-only open of a named pipe block?
If you can't eliminate the source of the disk block, then one way is to wrap the process in the thread so you can force kill it. But if you do this, you leave opportunity for half-written and corrupted files on disk.

I suggest using os._exit instead of sys.exit, as sys.exit doesnt quit a program but raises exception level, or exits a thread. os._exit(-1) quits the entire program

import sys ,subprocess
subprocess.Popen(["C:/Python27/python.exe", "C:/GUI/TestGUI.py"])
sys.exit(0)
Popen from subprocess module what you are looking for.

Related

Python freezes running exe file

I'm doing a simple python gui and on button click it will run a simple command:
os.system("C:/cygwin64/bin/bash.exe")
When I look in the console it ran correctly and but my guy freezes and is not responding.
If I run the the command in the console without python it works perfectly and I start cygwin terminal.
If you know what is cygwin is there a better way to start it in the same terminal?
os.system blocks the current thread, you can use os.popen in order to do that in another thread, and it also gives you few methods to detach/read/write etc' that process.
for example,
import os
a = os.popen("python -c 'while True: print(1)'")
will create a new process that will be terminated as soon as you terminate your script.
you can do
for i in a:
print(i)
for example, and it will block the thread as os.system does.
you can a.detach() it whenever you want to terminate the process.
However, os.system
import os
os.system("python -c 'while True: print(1)'")
it will output the 1s forever until you terminate the script.
You can use function Popen in package subprocess. It has many possible arguments that allow you to pipe input to and/or pipe output from the program you are running. But if you just want to execute bash.exe while allowing your original Python program to continue running and eventually wait for the completion of bash.exe, then:
import subprocess
# pass a list of command-line arguments:
p = subprocess.Popen(["C:/cygwin64/bin/bash.exe"])
... # continue executing
# wait for the subprocess (bash.exe) to end:
exit_code = p.wait()

subprocess.Popen makes terminal crash after KeyboardInterrupt

I wrote a simple python script ./vader-shell which uses subprocess.Popen to launch a spark-shell and I have to deal with KeyboardInterrupt, since otherwise the child process would not die
command = ['/opt/spark/current23/bin/spark-shell']
command.extend(params)
p = subprocess.Popen(command)
try:
p.communicate()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
p.terminate()
This is what I see with ps f
When I actually interrupt with ctrl-C, I see the processes dying (most of the time). However the terminal starts acting weird: I don't see any cursor, and all the lines starts to appear randomly
I am really lost in what is the best way to run a subprocess with this library and how to handle killing of the child processes. What I want to achieve is basic: whenever my python process is killed with a ctrl-C, I want all the family of process being killed. I googled several solutions os.kill, p.wait() after termination, calling subprocess.Popen(['reset']) after termination but none of them worked.
Do you know what is the best way to kill when KeyboardInterrupt happens? Or do you know any other more reliable library to use to spin-up processes?
There is nothing blatantly wrong with your code, the problem is that the command you are launching tries to do stuff with the current terminal, and does not correctly restore the settings where shutting down. Replacing your command with a "sleep" like below will run just fine and stop on Ctrl+C without problems:
import subprocess
command = ['/bin/bash']
command.extend(['-c', 'sleep 600'])
p = subprocess.Popen(command)
try:
p.communicate()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
p.terminate()
I don't know what you're trying to do with spark-shell, but if you don't need it's output you could try to redirect it to /dev/null so that it's doesn't mess up the terminal display:
p = subprocess.Popen(command, stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL)

How to stop airodump-ng with the Python subprocess module

I wrote a program (I ran it in the terminal) that goes through a list of terminal commands (Kali).
import subprocess as sub
import time
sub.call(['airmon-ng', 'start', 'wlan0'])
p = sub.call(['airodump-ng','wlan0mon'])
time.sleep(10)
p.kill()
The last commmand is airodump-ng wlan0mon. Everything works fine (everything is displayed in the terminal (beacons, ESSID, etc.)).
After a specified time I wish to kill the process (airodump-ng wlan0mon).
I dont want to press ctrl-c by hand!
p.kill() does not work (maybe improper use)
How can I do this? What command to send through the subprocess module?
subprocess.call() waits for the subprocess to finish before your Python program executes the next statement. You'll want to use subprocess.Popen() to initialize a separate ("background") process and then continue your Python program.
sub.call(['airmon-ng', 'start', 'wlan0'])
p = sub.Popen(['airodump-ng','wlan0mon'])
time.sleep(10)
p.kill()
You could use subprocess to run "killall airodump-ng".
However, if you do this, you may as well convert the whole thing to a bash script.

Subprocess.check_call and throbber not working

So I have this part of code which does a simple thing : it launches a script and while the script is processing, a throbber is set on.
def go(self):
if ui.chk.isChecked():
self.startThrobber()
script = subprocess.check_call(r'"C:\Program Files\FME\fme.exe"', shell=False)
if script == 0:
self.stopThrobber() # opens a QMessageBox and stops throbber
else:
QMessageBox.information(self.popup(), "Errpr", "Error !")
After trying different methods (QThread, subprocess.Popen ...) this is the closest i got to make it work.
The only thing that doesn't work is that the throbber doesn't start right before the subprocess is executed, it starts after and thus it never stops.
So why is the throbber not ending when stopThrobber() is executed ?
And why is startThrobber not being executed before the subprocess (i'm pretty sure it's a subprocess thing, but i'm pretty new to all this, never heard about thread until yesterday)
EDIT :
The single quote was just a typing error, sorry. Still doesn't fix the problem.
Any call to a subprocess, from your main thread, that is blocking (waits for return) is going to stop your throbber from working properly. My answer to your other SO question on this topic outlines an approach that does not cause the subprocess call to block the main thread. I should point out that solution is not the only way to create a non-blocking call to a subprocess (for instance see here. You could create a QTimer to poll the subprocess poll() method periodically so that you can check the returncode to see if the subprocess has finished.)
The key theme is that you need your methods that run in the main thread to return quickly in order to keep the GUI responsive and allow your throbber to run/animate. So choose a way to launch the subprocess that meets this requirement.
Your single quotes denoting the raw string enclose the 'shell' argument.
def go(self):
if ui.chk.isChecked():
self.startThrobber()
script = subprocess.check_call(r"C:\Program Files\FME\fme.exe", shell=False)
if script == 0:
self.stopThrobber() # opens a QMessageBox and stops throbber
else:
QMessageBox.information(self.popup(), "Errpr", "Error !")
So I've tried another thing (unsuccessfully..)
When I click on a button, it executes startThrobber() and sends a signal to the following function :
def go(self):
self.startThrobber()
script = subprocess.Popen(r'"C:\Program Files\FME\fme.exe" ', shell=False)
while script.poll() == None:
time.sleep(1)
else:
p.stopThrobber()
But still doesn't working.. startThrobber is executed but nothing appears on the GUI... I thougth that the point of subprocess was to allow to do multiple tasks simultaneously so why isn't the throbber appearing ?
UPDATE : if i erase the while loop, startThrobber works : it appears while the subprocess is turning. So why when there is the while loop it doesn't work ?!

Python losing control of subprocess?

I'm using a commercial application that uses Python as part of its scripting API. One of the functions provided is something called App.run(). When this function is called, it starts a new Java process that does the rest of the execution. (Unfortunately, I don't really know what it's doing under the hood as the supplied Python modules are .pyc files, and many of the Python functions are SWIG generated).
The trouble I'm having is that I'm building the App.run() call into a larger Python application that needs to do some guaranteed cleanup code (closing a database, etc.). Unfortunately, if the subprocess is interrupted with Ctrl+C, it aborts and returns to the command line without returning control to the main Python program. Thus, my cleanup code never executes.
So far I've tried:
Registering a function with atexit... doesn't work
Putting cleanup in a class __del__ destructor... doesn't work. (App.run() is inside the class)
Creating a signal handler for Ctrl+C in the main Python app... doesn't work
Putting App.run() in a Thread... results in a Memory Fault after the Ctrl+C
Putting App.run() in a Process (from multiprocessing)... doesn't work
Any ideas what could be happening?
This is just an outline- but something like this?
import os
cpid = os.fork()
if not cpid:
# change stdio handles etc
os.setsid() # Probably not needed
App.run()
os._exit(0)
os.waitpid(cpid)
# clean up here
(os.fork is *nix only)
The same idea could be implemented with subprocess in an OS agnostic way. The idea is running App.run() in a child process and then waiting for the child process to exit; regardless of how the child process died. On posix, you could also trap for SIGCHLD (Child process death). I'm not a windows guru, so if applicable and subprocess doesn't work, someone else will have to chime in here.
After App.run() is called, I'd be curious what the process tree looks like. It's possible its running an exec and taking over the python process space. If thats happening, creating a child process is the only way I can think of trapping it.
If try: App.run() finally: cleanup() doesn't work; you could try to run it in a subprocess:
import sys
from subprocess import call
rc = call([sys.executable, 'path/to/run_app.py'])
cleanup()
Or if you have the code in a string you could use -c option e.g.:
rc = call([sys.executable, '-c', '''import sys
print(sys.argv)
'''])
You could implement #tMC's suggestion using subprocess by adding
preexec_fn=os.setsid argument (note: no ()) though I don't see how creating a process group might help here. Or you could try shell=True argument to run it in a separate shell.
You might give another try to multiprocessing:
import multiprocessing as mp
if __name__=="__main__":
p = mp.Process(target=App.run)
p.start()
p.join()
cleanup()
Are you able to wrap the App.Run() in a Try/Catch?
Something like:
try:
App.Run()
except (KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit):
print "User requested an exit..."
cleanup()

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