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Python: Timer, how to stop thread when program ends?

I have a function I'm calling every 5 seconds like such:
def check_buzz(super_buzz_words):
print 'Checking buzz'
t = Timer(5.0, check_buzz, args=(super_buzz_words,))
t.dameon = True
t.start()
buzz_word = get_buzz_word()
if buzz_word is not 'fail':
super_buzz_words.put(buzz_word)
main()
check_buzz()
I'm exiting the script by either catching a KeyboardInterrupt or by catching a System exit and calling this:
sys.exit('\nShutting Down\n')
I'm also restarting the program every so often by calling:
execv(sys.executable, [sys.executable] + sys.argv)
My question is, how do I get that timer thread to shut off? If I keyboard interrupt, the timer keeps going.

I think you just spelled daemon wrong, it should have been:
t.daemon = True
Then sys.exit() should work

Expanding on the answer from notorious.no, and the comment asking:
How can I call t.cancel() if I have no access to t oustide the
function?
Give the Timer thread a distinct name when you first create it:
import threading
def check_buzz(super_buzz_words):
print 'Checking buzz'
t = Timer(5.0, check_buzz, args=(super_buzz_words,))
t.daemon = True
t.name = "check_buzz_daemon"
t.start()
Although the local variable t soon goes out of scope, the Timer thread that t pointed to still exists and still retains the name assigned to it.
Your atexit-registered method can then identify this thread by its name and cancel it:
from atexit import register
def all_done():
for thr in threading._enumerate():
if thr.name == "check_buzz_daemon":
if thr.is_alive():
thr.cancel()
thr.join()
register(all_done)
Calling join() after calling cancel()is based on a StackOverflow answer by Cédric Julien.
HOWEVER, your thread is set to be a Daemon. According to this StackOverflow post, daemon threads do not need to be explicitly terminated.

from atexit import register
def all_done():
if t.is_alive():
# do something that will close your thread gracefully
register(all_done)
Basically when your code is about to exit, it will fire one last function and this is where you will check if your thread is still running. If it is, do something that will either cancel the transaction or otherwise exit gracefully. In general, it's best to let threads finish by themselves, but if it's not doing anything important (please note the emphasis) than you can just do t.cancel(). Design your code so that threads will finish on their own if possible.

Another way would be to use the Queue() module to send and recieve info from a thread using the .put() outside the thread and the .get() inside the thread.
What you can also do is create a txt file and make program write to it when you exit And put an if statement in the thread function to check it after each iteration (this is not a really good solution but it also works)
I would have put a code exemple but i am writing from mobile sorry

Why print operation within signal handler may change deadlock situation?

I got simple program as below:
import threading
import time
import signal
WITH_DEADLOCK = 0
lock = threading.Lock()
def interruptHandler(signo, frame):
print str(frame), 'received', signo
lock.acquire()
try:
time.sleep(3)
finally:
if WITH_DEADLOCK:
print str(frame), 'release'
lock.release()
signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, interruptHandler)
for x in xrange(60):
print time.strftime("%H:%M:%S"), 'main thread is working'
time.sleep(1)
So, if you start that program and even Ctrl+C is pressed twice within 3 seconds, there is no deadlock. Each time you press Ctrl + C proper line is displayed.
If you change WITH_DEADLOCK=1 and you would press Ctrl+C twice (withing 3 seconds) then program will be hung.
Does anybody may explain why print operation make such difference?
(My python version is 2.6.5)

To be honest I think J.F. Sebastian's comment is the most appropriate answer here - you need to make your signal handler reentrant, which it currently isn't, and it is mostly just surprising that it works anyway without the print statement.

right way to run some code with timeout in Python

I looked online and found some SO discussing and ActiveState recipes for running some code with a timeout. It looks there are some common approaches:
Use thread that run the code, and join it with timeout. If timeout elapsed - kill the thread. This is not directly supported in Python (used private _Thread__stop function) so it is bad practice
Use signal.SIGALRM - but this approach not working on Windows!
Use subprocess with timeout - but this is too heavy - what if I want to start interruptible task often, I don't want fire process for each!
So, what is the right way? I'm not asking about workarounds (eg use Twisted and async IO), but actual way to solve actual problem - I have some function and I want to run it only with some timeout. If timeout elapsed, I want control back. And I want it to work on Linux and Windows.

A completely general solution to this really, honestly does not exist. You have to use the right solution for a given domain.
If you want timeouts for code you fully control, you have to write it to cooperate. Such code has to be able to break up into little chunks in some way, as in an event-driven system. You can also do this by threading if you can ensure nothing will hold a lock too long, but handling locks right is actually pretty hard.
If you want timeouts because you're afraid code is out of control (for example, if you're afraid the user will ask your calculator to compute 9**(9**9)), you need to run it in another process. This is the only easy way to sufficiently isolate it. Running it in your event system or even a different thread will not be enough. It is also possible to break things up into little chunks similar to the other solution, but requires very careful handling and usually isn't worth it; in any event, that doesn't allow you to do the same exact thing as just running the Python code.

What you might be looking for is the multiprocessing module. If subprocess is too heavy, then this may not suit your needs either.
import time
import multiprocessing
def do_this_other_thing_that_may_take_too_long(duration):
time.sleep(duration)
return 'done after sleeping {0} seconds.'.format(duration)
pool = multiprocessing.Pool(1)
print 'starting....'
res = pool.apply_async(do_this_other_thing_that_may_take_too_long, [8])
for timeout in range(1, 10):
try:
print '{0}: {1}'.format(duration, res.get(timeout))
except multiprocessing.TimeoutError:
print '{0}: timed out'.format(duration)
print 'end'

If it's network related you could try:
import socket
socket.setdefaulttimeout(number)

I found this with eventlet library:
http://eventlet.net/doc/modules/timeout.html
from eventlet.timeout import Timeout
timeout = Timeout(seconds, exception)
try:
... # execution here is limited by timeout
finally:
timeout.cancel()

For "normal" Python code, that doesn't linger prolongued times in C extensions or I/O waits, you can achieve your goal by setting a trace function with sys.settrace() that aborts the running code when the timeout is reached.
Whether that is sufficient or not depends on how co-operating or malicious the code you run is. If it's well-behaved, a tracing function is sufficient.

An other way is to use faulthandler:
import time
import faulthandler
faulthandler.enable()
try:
faulthandler.dump_tracebacks_later(3)
time.sleep(10)
finally:
faulthandler.cancel_dump_tracebacks_later()
N.B: The faulthandler module is part of stdlib in python3.3.

If you're running code that you expect to die after a set time, then you should write it properly so that there aren't any negative effects on shutdown, no matter if its a thread or a subprocess. A command pattern with undo would be useful here.
So, it really depends on what the thread is doing when you kill it. If its just crunching numbers who cares if you kill it. If its interacting with the filesystem and you kill it , then maybe you should really rethink your strategy.
What is supported in Python when it comes to threads? Daemon threads and joins. Why does python let the main thread exit if you've joined a daemon while its still active? Because its understood that someone using daemon threads will (hopefully) write the code in a way that it wont matter when that thread dies. Giving a timeout to a join and then letting main die, and thus taking any daemon threads with it, is perfectly acceptable in this context.

I've solved that in that way:
For me is worked great (in windows and not heavy at all) I'am hope it was useful for someone)
import threading
import time
class LongFunctionInside(object):
lock_state = threading.Lock()
working = False
def long_function(self, timeout):
self.working = True
timeout_work = threading.Thread(name="thread_name", target=self.work_time, args=(timeout,))
timeout_work.setDaemon(True)
timeout_work.start()
while True: # endless/long work
time.sleep(0.1) # in this rate the CPU is almost not used
if not self.working: # if state is working == true still working
break
self.set_state(True)
def work_time(self, sleep_time): # thread function that just sleeping specified time,
# in wake up it asking if function still working if it does set the secured variable work to false
time.sleep(sleep_time)
if self.working:
self.set_state(False)
def set_state(self, state): # secured state change
while True:
self.lock_state.acquire()
try:
self.working = state
break
finally:
self.lock_state.release()
lw = LongFunctionInside()
lw.long_function(10)
The main idea is to create a thread that will just sleep in parallel to "long work" and in wake up (after timeout) change the secured variable state, the long function checking the secured variable during its work.
I'm pretty new in Python programming, so if that solution has a fundamental errors, like resources, timing, deadlocks problems , please response)).

solving with the 'with' construct and merging solution from -
Timeout function if it takes too long to finish
this thread which work better.
import threading, time
class Exception_TIMEOUT(Exception):
pass
class linwintimeout:
def __init__(self, f, seconds=1.0, error_message='Timeout'):
self.seconds = seconds
self.thread = threading.Thread(target=f)
self.thread.daemon = True
self.error_message = error_message
def handle_timeout(self):
raise Exception_TIMEOUT(self.error_message)
def __enter__(self):
try:
self.thread.start()
self.thread.join(self.seconds)
except Exception, te:
raise te
def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
if self.thread.is_alive():
return self.handle_timeout()
def function():
while True:
print "keep printing ...", time.sleep(1)
try:
with linwintimeout(function, seconds=5.0, error_message='exceeded timeout of %s seconds' % 5.0):
pass
except Exception_TIMEOUT, e:
print " attention !! execeeded timeout, giving up ... %s " % e

Ctrl-C doesn't work when using threading.Timer

I'm writing a multithreaded Python app on Windows.
I used to terminate the app using ctrl-c, but once I added threading.Timer instances ctrl-c stopped working (or sometimes takes a very long time).
How could this be?
What's the relation between having Timer threads and ctrl-c?
UPDATE:
I found the following in Python's thread documentation:
Threads interact strangely with
interrupts: the KeyboardInterrupt
exception will be received by an
arbitrary thread. (When the signal
module is available, interrupts always
go to the main thread.)

The way threading.Thread (and thus threading.Timer) works is that each thread registers itself with the threading module, and upon interpreter exit the interpreter will wait for all registered threads to exit before terminating the interpreter proper. This is done so threads actually finish execution, instead of having the interpreter brutally removed from under them. So when you hit ^C, the main thread receives the signal, decides to terminate and waits for the timers to finish.
You can set threads daemonic (with the setDaemon method) to make the threading module not wait for these threads, but if they happen to be executing Python code while the interpreter exits, you get confusing errors during exit. Even if you cancel the threading.Timer (and set it daemonic) it can still wake up while the interpreter is being destroyed -- because threading.Timer's cancel method just tells the threading.Timer not to execute anything when it wakes up, but it has to actually execute Python code to make that determination.
There is no graceful way to terminate threads (other than the current one), and no reliable way to interrupt a thread that's blocked. A more manageable approach to timers is usually an event loop, like the ones GUIs and other event-driven systems offer you. What to use depends entirely on what else your program will be doing.

There is a presentation by David Beazley that sheds some light on the topic. The PDF is available here. Look around pages 22--25 ("Interlude: Signals" to "Frozen Signals").

This is a possible workaround: using time.sleep() instead of Timer means a "graceful shutdown" mechanism can be implemented ... for Python3 where, it appears, KeyboardInterrupt is only raised in user code for the main thread. Otherwise, it appears, the exception is "ignored" as per here: in fact it results in the thread where it occurs dying immediately, but not any ancestor threads, where problematically it can't be caught.
Let's say you want Ctrl-C responsiveness to be 0.5 seconds, but you only want to repeat some actual work every 5 seconds (work is of random duration as below):
import threading, sys, time, random
blip_counter = 0
work_threads=[]
def repeat_every_5():
global blip_counter
print( f'counter: {blip_counter}')
def real_work():
real_work_duration_s = random.randrange(10)
print( f'do some real work every 5 seconds, lasting {real_work_duration_s} s: starting...')
# in a real world situation stop_event.is_set() can be tested anywhere in the code
for interval_500ms in range( real_work_duration_s * 2 ):
if threading.current_thread().stop_event.is_set():
print( f'stop_event SET!')
return
time.sleep(0.5)
print( f'...real work ends')
# clean up work_threads as appropriate
for work_thread in work_threads:
if not work_thread.is_alive():
print(f'work thread {work_thread} dead, removing from list' )
work_threads.remove( work_thread )
new_work_thread = threading.Thread(target=real_work)
# stop event for graceful shutdown
new_work_thread.stop_event = threading.Event()
work_threads.append(new_work_thread)
# in fact, because a graceful shutdown is now implemented, new_work_thread doesn't have to be daemon
# new_work_thread.daemon = True
new_work_thread.start()
blip_counter += 1
time.sleep( 5 )
timer_thread = threading.Thread(target=repeat_every_5)
timer_thread.daemon = True
timer_thread.start()
repeat_every_5()
while True:
try:
time.sleep( 0.5 )
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print( f'shutting down due to Ctrl-C..., work threads left: {len(work_threads)}')
# trigger stop event for graceful shutdown
for work_thread in work_threads:
if work_thread.is_alive():
print( f'work_thread {work_thread}: setting STOP event')
work_thread.stop_event.set()
print( f'work_thread {work_thread}: joining to main...')
work_thread.join()
print( f'work_thread {work_thread}: ...joined to main')
else:
print( f'work_thread {work_thread} has died' )
sys.exit(1)
This while True: mechanism looks a bit clunky. But I think, as I say, that currently (Python 3.8.x) KeyboardInterrupt can only be caught on the main thread.
PS according to my experiments, handling child processes may be easier, in the sense that Ctrl-C will, it seems, in a simple case at least, cause a KeyboardInterrupt to occur simultaneously in all running processes.

Wrap your main while loop in a try except:
from threading import Timer
import time
def randomfn():
print ("Heartbeat sent!")
class RepeatingTimer(Timer):
def run(self):
while not self.finished.is_set():
self.function(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
self.finished.wait(self.interval)
t = RepeatingTimer(10.0, function=randomfn)
print ("Starting...")
t.start()
while (True):
try:
print ("Hello")
time.sleep(1)
except:
print ("Cancelled timer...")
t.cancel()
print ("Cancelled loop...")
break
print ("End")
Results:
Heartbeat sent!
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Cancelled timer...
Cancelled loop...
End

How to exit the entire application from a Python thread?

How can I exit my entire Python application from one of its threads? sys.exit() only terminates the thread in which it is called, so that is no help.
I would not like to use an os.kill() solution, as this isn't very clean.

Short answer: use os._exit.
Long answer with example:
I yanked and slightly modified a simple threading example from a tutorial on DevShed:
import threading, sys, os
theVar = 1
class MyThread ( threading.Thread ):
def run ( self ):
global theVar
print 'This is thread ' + str ( theVar ) + ' speaking.'
print 'Hello and good bye.'
theVar = theVar + 1
if theVar == 4:
#sys.exit(1)
os._exit(1)
print '(done)'
for x in xrange ( 7 ):
MyThread().start()
If you keep sys.exit(1) commented out, the script will die after the third thread prints out. If you use sys.exit(1) and comment out os._exit(1), the third thread does not print (done), and the program runs through all seven threads.
os._exit "should normally only be used in the child process after a fork()" -- and a separate thread is close enough to that for your purpose. Also note that there are several enumerated values listed right after os._exit in that manual page, and you should prefer those as arguments to os._exit instead of simple numbers like I used in the example above.

If all your threads except the main ones are daemons, the best approach is generally thread.interrupt_main() -- any thread can use it to raise a KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread, which can normally lead to reasonably clean exit from the main thread (including finalizers in the main thread getting called, etc).
Of course, if this results in some non-daemon thread keeping the whole process alive, you need to followup with os._exit as Mark recommends -- but I'd see that as the last resort (kind of like a kill -9;-) because it terminates things quite brusquely (finalizers not run, including try/finally blocks, with blocks, atexit functions, etc).

Using thread.interrupt_main() may not help in some situation. KeyboardInterrupts are often used in command line applications to exit the current command or to clean the input line.
In addition, os._exit will kill the process immediately without running any finally blocks in your code, which may be dangerous (files and connections will not be closed for example).
The solution I've found is to register a signal handler in the main thread that raises a custom exception. Use the background thread to fire the signal.
import signal
import os
import threading
import time
class ExitCommand(Exception):
pass
def signal_handler(signal, frame):
raise ExitCommand()
def thread_job():
time.sleep(5)
os.kill(os.getpid(), signal.SIGUSR1)
signal.signal(signal.SIGUSR1, signal_handler)
threading.Thread(target=thread_job).start() # thread will fire in 5 seconds
try:
while True:
user_input = raw_input('Blocked by raw_input loop ')
# do something with 'user_input'
except ExitCommand:
pass
finally:
print('finally will still run')
Related questions:
Why does sys.exit() not exit when called inside a thread in Python?
Python: How to quit CLI when stuck in blocking raw_input?

The easiest way to exit the whole program is, we should terminate the program by using the process id (pid).
import os
import psutil
current_system_pid = os.getpid()
ThisSystem = psutil.Process(current_system_pid)
ThisSystem.terminate()
To install psutl:- "pip install psutil"

For Linux you can use the kill() command and pass the current process' ID and the SIGINT signal to start the steps to exit the app.
import signal
os.kill(os.getpid(), signal.SIGINT)