Develop Reference

How to check output of a sub process but also hide it? [duplicate]

NB. I have seen Log output of multiprocessing.Process - unfortunately, it doesn't answer this question.
I am creating a child process (on windows) via multiprocessing. I want all of the child process's stdout and stderr output to be redirected to a log file, rather than appearing at the console. The only suggestion I have seen is for the child process to set sys.stdout to a file. However, this does not effectively redirect all stdout output, due to the behaviour of stdout redirection on Windows.
To illustrate the problem, build a Windows DLL with the following code
#include <iostream>
extern "C"
{
__declspec(dllexport) void writeToStdOut()
{
std::cout << "Writing to STDOUT from test DLL" << std::endl;
}
}
Then create and run a python script like the following, which imports this DLL and calls the function:
from ctypes import *
import sys
print
print "Writing to STDOUT from python, before redirect"
print
sys.stdout = open("stdout_redirect_log.txt", "w")
print "Writing to STDOUT from python, after redirect"
testdll = CDLL("Release/stdout_test.dll")
testdll.writeToStdOut()
In order to see the same behaviour as me, it is probably necessary for the DLL to be built against a different C runtime than than the one Python uses. In my case, python is built with Visual Studio 2010, but my DLL is built with VS 2005.
The behaviour I see is that the console shows:
> stdout_test.py
Writing to STDOUT from python, before redirect
Writing to STDOUT from test DLL
While the file stdout_redirect_log.txt ends up containing:
Writing to STDOUT from python, after redirect
In other words, setting sys.stdout failed to redirect the stdout output generated by the DLL. This is unsurprising given the nature of the underlying APIs for stdout redirection in Windows. I have encountered this problem at the native/C++ level before and never found a way to reliably redirect stdout from within a process. It has to be done externally.
This is actually the very reason I am launching a child process - it's so that I can connect externally to its pipes and thus guarantee that I am intercepting all of its output. I can definitely do this by launching the process manually with pywin32, but I would very much like to be able to use the facilities of multiprocessing, in particular the ability to communicate with the child process via a multiprocessing Pipe object, in order to get progress updates. The question is whether there is any way to both use multiprocessing for its IPC facilities and to reliably redirect all of the child's stdout and stderr output to a file.
UPDATE: Looking at the source code for multiprocessing.Processs, it has a static member, _Popen, which looks like it can be used to override the class used to create the process. If it's set to None (default), it uses a multiprocessing.forking._Popen, but it looks like by saying
multiprocessing.Process._Popen = MyPopenClass
I could override the process creation. However, although I could derive this from multiprocessing.forking._Popen, it looks like I would have to copy a bunch of internal stuff into my implementation, which sounds flaky and not very future-proof. If that's the only choice I think I'd probably plump for doing the whole thing manually with pywin32 instead.

The solution you suggest is a good one: create your processes manually such that you have explicit access to their stdout/stderr file handles. You can then create a socket to communicate with the sub-process and use multiprocessing.connection over that socket (multiprocessing.Pipe creates the same type of connection object, so this should give you all the same IPC functionality).
Here's a two-file example.
master.py:
import multiprocessing.connection
import subprocess
import socket
import sys, os
## Listen for connection from remote process (and find free port number)
port = 10000
while True:
try:
l = multiprocessing.connection.Listener(('localhost', int(port)), authkey="secret")
break
except socket.error as ex:
if ex.errno != 98:
raise
port += 1 ## if errno==98, then port is not available.
proc = subprocess.Popen((sys.executable, "subproc.py", str(port)), stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
## open connection for remote process
conn = l.accept()
conn.send([1, "asd", None])
print(proc.stdout.readline())
subproc.py:
import multiprocessing.connection
import subprocess
import sys, os, time
port = int(sys.argv[1])
conn = multiprocessing.connection.Client(('localhost', port), authkey="secret")
while True:
try:
obj = conn.recv()
print("received: %s\n" % str(obj))
sys.stdout.flush()
except EOFError: ## connection closed
break
You may also want to see the first answer to this question to get non-blocking reads from the subprocess.

I don't think you have a better option than redirecting a subprocess to a file as you mentioned in your comment.
The way consoles stdin/out/err work in windows is each process when it's born has its std handles defined. You can change them with SetStdHandle. When you modify python's sys.stdout you only modify where python prints out stuff, not where other DLL's are printing stuff. Part of the CRT in your DLL is using GetStdHandle to find out where to print out to. If you want, you can do whatever piping you want in windows API in your DLL or in your python script with pywin32. Though I do think it'll be simpler with subprocess.

Alternatively - and I know this might be slightly off-topic, but helped in my case for the same problem - , this can be resolved with screen on Linux:
screen -L -Logfile './logfile_%Y-%m-%d.log' python my_multiproc_script.py
this way no need to implement all the master-child communication

I assume I'm off base and missing something, but for what it's worth here is what came to mind when I read your question.
If you can intercept all of the stdout and stderr (I got that impression from your question), then why not add or wrap that capture functionality around each of your processes? Then send what is captured through a queue to a consumer that can do whatever you want with all of the outputs?

In my situation I changed sys.stdout.write to write to a PySide QTextEdit. I couldn't read from sys.stdout and I didn't know how to change sys.stdout to be readable. I created two Pipes. One for stdout and the other for stderr. In the separate process I redirect sys.stdout and sys.stderr to the child connection of the multiprocessing pipe. On the main process I created two threads to read the stdout and stderr parent pipe and redirect the pipe data to sys.stdout and sys.stderr.
import sys
import contextlib
import threading
import multiprocessing as mp
import multiprocessing.queues
from queue import Empty
import time
class PipeProcess(mp.Process):
"""Process to pipe the output of the sub process and redirect it to this sys.stdout and sys.stderr.
Note:
The use_queue = True argument will pass data between processes using Queues instead of Pipes. Queues will
give you the full output and read all of the data from the Queue. A pipe is more efficient, but may not
redirect all of the output back to the main process.
"""
def __init__(self, group=None, target=None, name=None, args=tuple(), kwargs={}, *_, daemon=None,
use_pipe=None, use_queue=None):
self.read_out_th = None
self.read_err_th = None
self.pipe_target = target
self.pipe_alive = mp.Event()
if use_pipe or (use_pipe is None and not use_queue): # Default
self.parent_stdout, self.child_stdout = mp.Pipe(False)
self.parent_stderr, self.child_stderr = mp.Pipe(False)
else:
self.parent_stdout = self.child_stdout = mp.Queue()
self.parent_stderr = self.child_stderr = mp.Queue()
args = (self.child_stdout, self.child_stderr, target) + tuple(args)
target = self.run_pipe_out_target
super(PipeProcess, self).__init__(group=group, target=target, name=name, args=args, kwargs=kwargs,
daemon=daemon)
def start(self):
"""Start the multiprocess and reading thread."""
self.pipe_alive.set()
super(PipeProcess, self).start()
self.read_out_th = threading.Thread(target=self.read_pipe_out,
args=(self.pipe_alive, self.parent_stdout, sys.stdout))
self.read_err_th = threading.Thread(target=self.read_pipe_out,
args=(self.pipe_alive, self.parent_stderr, sys.stderr))
self.read_out_th.daemon = True
self.read_err_th.daemon = True
self.read_out_th.start()
self.read_err_th.start()
#classmethod
def run_pipe_out_target(cls, pipe_stdout, pipe_stderr, pipe_target, *args, **kwargs):
"""The real multiprocessing target to redirect stdout and stderr to a pipe or queue."""
sys.stdout.write = cls.redirect_write(pipe_stdout) # , sys.__stdout__) # Is redirected in main process
sys.stderr.write = cls.redirect_write(pipe_stderr) # , sys.__stderr__) # Is redirected in main process
pipe_target(*args, **kwargs)
#staticmethod
def redirect_write(child, out=None):
"""Create a function to write out a pipe and write out an additional out."""
if isinstance(child, mp.queues.Queue):
send = child.put
else:
send = child.send_bytes # No need to pickle with child_conn.send(data)
def write(data, *args):
try:
if isinstance(data, str):
data = data.encode('utf-8')
send(data)
if out is not None:
out.write(data)
except:
pass
return write
#classmethod
def read_pipe_out(cls, pipe_alive, pipe_out, out):
if isinstance(pipe_out, mp.queues.Queue):
# Queue has better functionality to get all of the data
def recv():
return pipe_out.get(timeout=0.5)
def is_alive():
return pipe_alive.is_set() or pipe_out.qsize() > 0
else:
# Pipe is more efficient
recv = pipe_out.recv_bytes # No need to unpickle with data = pipe_out.recv()
is_alive = pipe_alive.is_set
# Loop through reading and redirecting data
while is_alive():
try:
data = recv()
if isinstance(data, bytes):
data = data.decode('utf-8')
out.write(data)
except EOFError:
break
except Empty:
pass
except:
pass
def join(self, *args):
# Wait for process to finish (unless a timeout was given)
super(PipeProcess, self).join(*args)
# Trigger to stop the threads
self.pipe_alive.clear()
# Pipe must close to prevent blocking and waiting on recv forever
if not isinstance(self.parent_stdout, mp.queues.Queue):
with contextlib.suppress():
self.parent_stdout.close()
with contextlib.suppress():
self.parent_stderr.close()
# Close the pipes and threads
with contextlib.suppress():
self.read_out_th.join()
with contextlib.suppress():
self.read_err_th.join()
def run_long_print():
for i in range(1000):
print(i)
print(i, file=sys.stderr)
print('finished')
if __name__ == '__main__':
# Example test write (My case was a QTextEdit)
out = open('stdout.log', 'w')
err = open('stderr.log', 'w')
# Overwrite the write function and not the actual stdout object to prove this works
sys.stdout.write = out.write
sys.stderr.write = err.write
# Create a process that uses pipes to read multiprocess output back into sys.stdout.write
proc = PipeProcess(target=run_long_print, use_queue=True) # If use_pipe=True Pipe may not write out all values
# proc.daemon = True # If daemon and use_queue Not all output may be redirected to stdout
proc.start()
# time.sleep(5) # Not needed unless use_pipe or daemon and all of stdout/stderr is desired
# Close the process
proc.join() # For some odd reason this blocks forever when use_queue=False
# Close the output files for this test
out.close()
err.close()

Here is the simple and straightforward way for capturing stdout for multiprocessing.Process:
import app
import io
import sys
from multiprocessing import Process
def run_app(some_param):
sys.stdout = io.TextIOWrapper(open(sys.stdout.fileno(), 'wb', 0), write_through=True)
app.run()
app_process = Process(target=run_app, args=('some_param',))
app_process.start()
# Use app_process.termninate() for python <= 3.7.
app_process.kill()

python: Using ncurses when underlying library logs to stdout

I am trying to write a small python program that uses curses and a SWIGed C++ library. That library logs a lot of information to STDOUT, which interferes with the output from curses. I would like to somehow intercept that content and then display it nicely through ncurses. Is there some way to do this?

A minimal demonstrating example will hopefully show how this all works. I am not going to set up SWIG just for this, and opt for a quick and dirty demonstration of calling a .so file through ctypes to emulate that external C library usage. Just put the following in the working directory.
testlib.c
#include <stdio.h>
int vomit(void);
int vomit()
{
printf("vomiting output onto stdout\n");
fflush(stdout);
return 1;
}
Build with gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,testlib -o _testlib.so -fPIC testlib.c
testlib.py
import ctypes
from os.path import dirname
from os.path import join
testlib = ctypes.CDLL(join(dirname(__file__), '_testlib.so'))
demo.py (for minimum demonstration)
import os
import sys
import testlib
from tempfile import mktemp
pipename = mktemp()
os.mkfifo(pipename)
pipe_fno = os.open(pipename, os.O_RDWR | os.O_NONBLOCK)
stdout_fno = os.dup(sys.stdout.fileno())
os.dup2(pipe_fno, 1)
result = testlib.testlib.vomit()
os.dup2(stdout_fno, 1)
buf = bytearray()
while True:
try:
buf += os.read(pipe_fno, 1)
except Exception:
break
print("the captured output is: %s" % open('scratch').read())
print('the result of the program is: %d' % result)
os.unlink(pipename)
The caveat is that the output generated by the .so might be buffered somehow within the ctypes system (I have no idea how that part all works), and I cannot find a way to flush the output to ensure they are all outputted unless the fflush code is inside the .so; so there can be complications with how this ultimately behaves.
With threading, this can be done also (code is becoming quite atrocious, but it shows the idea):
import os
import sys
import testlib
from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
from tempfile import mktemp
def external():
# the thread that will call the .so that produces output
for i in range(7):
testlib.testlib.vomit()
sleep(1)
# setup
stdout_fno = os.dup(sys.stdout.fileno())
pipename = mktemp()
os.mkfifo(pipename)
pipe_fno = os.open(pipename, os.O_RDWR | os.O_NONBLOCK)
os.dup2(pipe_fno, 1)
def main():
thread = Thread(target=external)
thread.start()
buf = bytearray()
counter = 0
while thread.is_alive():
sleep(0.2)
try:
while True:
buf += os.read(pipe_fno, 1)
except BlockingIOError:
if buf:
# do some processing to show that the string is fully
# captured
output = 'external lib: [%s]\n' % buf.strip().decode('utf8')
# low level write to original stdout
os.write(stdout_fno, output.encode('utf8'))
buf.clear()
os.write(stdout_fno, b'tick: %d\n' % counter)
counter += 1
main()
# cleanup
os.dup2(stdout_fno, 1)
os.close(pipe_fno)
os.unlink(pipename)
Example execution:
$ python demo2.py
external lib: [vomiting output onto stdout]
tick: 0
tick: 1
tick: 2
tick: 3
external lib: [vomiting output onto stdout]
tick: 4
Note that everything is captured.
Now, since you do have make use of ncurses and also run that function in a thread, this is a bit tricky. Here be dragons.
We will need the ncurses API that will actually let us create a new screen to redirect the output, and again ctypes can be handy for this. Unfortunately, I am using absolute paths for the DLLs on my system; adjust as required.
lib.py
import ctypes
libc = ctypes.CDLL('/lib64/libc.so.6')
ncurses = ctypes.CDLL('/lib64/libncursesw.so.6')
class FILE(ctypes.Structure):
pass
class SCREEN(ctypes.Structure):
pass
FILE_p = ctypes.POINTER(FILE)
libc.fdopen.restype = FILE_p
SCREEN_p = ctypes.POINTER(SCREEN)
ncurses.newterm.restype = SCREEN_p
ncurses.set_term.restype = SCREEN_p
fdopen = libc.fdopen
newterm = ncurses.newterm
set_term = ncurses.set_term
delscreen = ncurses.delscreen
endwin = ncurses.endwin
Now that we have newterm and set_term, we can finally complete the script. Remove everything from the main function, and add the following:
# setup the curse window
import curses
from lib import newterm, fdopen, set_term, endwin, delscreen
stdin_fno = sys.stdin.fileno()
stdscr = curses.initscr()
# use the ctypes library to create a new screen and redirect output
# back to the original stdout
screen = newterm(None, fdopen(stdout_fno, 'w'), fdopen(stdin_fno, 'r'))
old_screen = set_term(screen)
stdscr.clear()
curses.noecho()
border = curses.newwin(8, 68, 4, 4)
border.border()
window = curses.newwin(6, 66, 5, 5)
window.scrollok(True)
window.clear()
border.refresh()
window.refresh()
def main():
thread = Thread(target=external)
thread.start()
buf = bytearray()
counter = 0
while thread.isAlive():
sleep(0.2)
try:
while True:
buf += os.read(pipe_fno, 1)
except BlockingIOError:
if buf:
output = 'external lib: [%s]\n' % buf.strip().decode('utf8')
buf.clear()
window.addstr(output)
window.refresh()
window.addstr('tick: %d\n' % counter)
counter += 1
window.refresh()
main()
# cleanup
os.dup2(stdout_fno, 1)
endwin()
delscreen(screen)
os.close(pipe_fno)
os.unlink(pipename)
This should sort of show that the intended result with the usage of ncurses be achieved, however for my case it hung at the end and I am not sure what else might be going on. I thought this could be caused by an accidental use of 32-bit Python while using that 64-bit shared object, but on exit things somehow don't play nicely (I thought misuse of ctypes is easy, but turns out it really is!). Anyway, this least it shows the output inside an ncurse window as you might expect.

#metatoaster indicated a link which talks about a way to temporarily redirect the standard output to /dev/null. That could show something about how to use dup2, but is not quite an answer by itself.
python's interface to curses uses only initscr, which means that the curses library writes its output to the standard output. The SWIG'd library writes its output to the standard output, but that would interfere with the curses output. You could solve the problem by
redirecting the curses output to /dev/tty, and
redirecting the SWIG'd output to a temporary file, and
reading the file, checking for updates to add to the screen.
Once initscr has been called, the curses library has its own copy of the output stream. If you can temporarily point the real standard output to a file first (before initializing curses), then open a new standard output to /dev/tty (for initscr), and then restore the (global!) output stream then that should work.

Scan memory of external process in windows with Python 3

I've been trying doing this for days without any success, so I hope that someone can help me.
My goal is to scan the memory of a process once I have the pid, and actually read the strings of that process.
For example I want to do something like this.
Let's say that I have a notepad open and the pid is = 4578.
I want first to check if in the process memory there is the string "cold water", if the string is in the memory then I would do a deeper scan extracting all the strings in the memory, otherwise I wouldnt.
from ctypes import *
import ctypes
import psutil
import time
def get_client_pid(process_name):
pid = None
for proc in psutil.process_iter():
if proc.name() == process_name:
pid = int(proc.pid)
print("Found, PID = ", pid)
break
return pid
pid = get_client_pid("notepad.exe.exe")
PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION = 0x0400
PROCESS_VM_READ = 0x0010
process = windll.kernel32.OpenProcess(PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION|PROCESS_VM_READ,False,pid)
readprocess = windll.kernel32.ReadProcessMemory
rdbuf = ctypes.c_uint()
bytread = ctypes.c_size_t()
base = 0x00400000
for addr in range(base, base + 11):
try:
if readprocess(process, ctypes.c_void_p(addr), ctypes.byref(rdbuf), ctypes.sizeof(rdbuf),ctypes.byref(bytread)):
print(rdbuf.value)
except Exception as e:
print("ERROR", e)
This is an example code I found somewhere and edited a bit.
How can I know all the addresses in memory that belong to a specific process?
is a better or simpler module than ctypes to do this?
thanks for help

it seems that you have some typing errors. Try replacing this code:
pid = get_client_pid("notepad.exe.exe")
With this one:
pid = get_client_pid("notepad.exe")

How to terminate process from Python using pid?

I'm trying to write some short script in python which would start another python code in subprocess if is not already started else terminate terminal & app (Linux).
So it looks like:
#!/usr/bin/python
from subprocess import Popen
text_file = open(".proc", "rb")
dat = text_file.read()
text_file.close()
def do(dat):
text_file = open(".proc", "w")
p = None
if dat == "x" :
p = Popen('python StripCore.py', shell=True)
text_file.write( str( p.pid ) )
else :
text_file.write( "x" )
p = # Assign process by pid / pid from int( dat )
p.terminate()
text_file.close()
do( dat )
Have problem of lacking knowledge to name proces by pid which app reads from file ".proc".
The other problem is that interpreter says that string named dat is not equal to "x" ??? What I've missed ?

Using the awesome psutil library it's pretty simple:
p = psutil.Process(pid)
p.terminate() #or p.kill()
If you don't want to install a new library, you can use the os module:
import os
import signal
os.kill(pid, signal.SIGTERM) #or signal.SIGKILL
See also the os.kill documentation.
If you are interested in starting the command python StripCore.py if it is not running, and killing it otherwise, you can use psutil to do this reliably.
Something like:
import psutil
from subprocess import Popen
for process in psutil.process_iter():
if process.cmdline() == ['python', 'StripCore.py']:
print('Process found. Terminating it.')
process.terminate()
break
else:
print('Process not found: starting it.')
Popen(['python', 'StripCore.py'])
Sample run:
$python test_strip.py #test_strip.py contains the code above
Process not found: starting it.
$python test_strip.py
Process found. Terminating it.
$python test_strip.py
Process not found: starting it.
$killall python
$python test_strip.py
Process not found: starting it.
$python test_strip.py
Process found. Terminating it.
$python test_strip.py
Process not found: starting it.
Note: In previous psutil versions cmdline was an attribute instead of a method.

I wanted to do the same thing as, but I wanted to do it in the one file.
So the logic would be:
if a script with my name is running, kill it, then exit
if a script with my name is not running, do stuff
I modified the answer by Bakuriu and came up with this:
from os import getpid
from sys import argv, exit
import psutil ## pip install psutil
myname = argv[0]
mypid = getpid()
for process in psutil.process_iter():
if process.pid != mypid:
for path in process.cmdline():
if myname in path:
print "process found"
process.terminate()
exit()
## your program starts here...
Running the script will do whatever the script does. Running another instance of the script will kill any existing instance of the script.
I use this to display a little PyGTK calendar widget which runs when I click the clock. If I click and the calendar is not up, the calendar displays. If the calendar is running and I click the clock, the calendar disappears.

So, not directly related but this is the first question that appears when you try to find how to terminate a process running from a specific folder using Python.
It also answers the question in a way(even though it is an old one with lots of answers).
While creating a faster way to scrape some government sites for data I had an issue where if any of the processes in the pool got stuck they would be skipped but still take up memory from my computer. This is the solution I reached for killing them, if anyone knows a better way to do it please let me know!
import pandas as pd
import wmi
from re import escape
import os
def kill_process(kill_path, execs):
f = wmi.WMI()
esc = escape(kill_path)
temp = {'id':[], 'path':[], 'name':[]}
for process in f.Win32_Process():
temp['id'].append(process.ProcessId)
temp['path'].append(process.ExecutablePath)
temp['name'].append(process.Name)
temp = pd.DataFrame(temp)
temp = temp.dropna(subset=['path']).reset_index().drop(columns=['index'])
temp = temp.loc[temp['path'].str.contains(esc)].loc[temp.name.isin(execs)].reset_index().drop(columns=['index'])
[os.system('taskkill /PID {} /f'.format(t)) for t in temp['id']]

Checking process status from Python

I am running on a Linux x86-64 system. From a Python (2.6) script, I wish to periodically check whether a given process (identified by pid) has become "defunct"/zombie (this means that entry in the process table exists but the process is doing nothing). It would be also good to know how much CPU the process is consuming (similar to what 'top' command shows).
Can somebody give me some pointers on how I can get these in Python?

I'd use the psutil library:
import psutil
proc = psutil.Process(pid)
if proc.status() == psutil.STATUS_ZOMBIE:
# Zombie process!

you can get top result in python as below:
linux:
import sys, os
f = os.popen("top -p 1 -n 1", "r")
text = f.read()
print text
update
windows:
from os import popen
from sys import stdin
ps = popen("C:/WINDOWS/system32/tasklist.exe","r")
pp = ps.readlines()
ps.close()
# wow, look at the robust parser!
pp.pop(0) # blank line
ph = pp.pop(0) # header line
pp.pop(0) # ===
print ("%d processes reported." % len(pp))
print ("First process in list:")
print (pp[0])
stdin.readline()