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How to run multiple servers with a python script? [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.

python os.fork() for performing operation under degraded credentials

I'm looking to implement the following command in python.
su ${USER} -c "whoami"
which simply create child process which runs under different privilege, and return the result of whoami back to the parent process.
As bash works, It should be done using os.fork() while the result is retrieved to parent process once the Chile process terminate its work.
def runWhoamiOtherUser(self):
pid = os.fork()
if pid == 0:
os.setuid(getpwnam(os.environ['USER'])[2])
x = getpass.getuser()
return x
pid, status = os.waitpid(pid, 0)
Is this the right way to do it ?

It has been added as a new feature to the subprocess module in Python 3.9, to the subprocess.Popen constructor:
New in version 3.9.
If user is not None, the setreuid() system call will be made in the
child process prior to the execution of the subprocess. If the
provided value is a string, it will be looked up via pwd.getpwnam()
and the value in pw_uid will be used. If the value is an integer, it
will be passed verbatim. (POSIX only)
https://docs.python.org/3.9/library/subprocess.html
Before 3.9, probably best to use that same setreuid() call. Same facilities are there for changing the group too, if you prefer that to user. The code was added in this commit, if you wanna check the specifics of the setting and maybe copy-paste the relevant part to your program: https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/2b2ead74382513d0bb9ef34504e283a71e6a706f

After starting process, how to get parent's PID in the child?

In Python, I start a new process via Popen(), which works fine. Now in the child process I want to find the parent's process ID.
What is the best way to achieve this, maybe I can pass the PID via the Popen constructor, but how? Or is there a better way to do so?
PS: If possible I would prefere a solution using only standard libraries.

You can use os.getppid():
os.getppid()
Return the parent’s process id.
Note: this works only on Unix, not on Windows. On Windows you can use os.getpid() in the parent process and pass the pid as argument to the process you start with Popen.
Windows support for os.getppid was added in Python 3.2.

Use psutil (here)
import psutil, os
psutil.Process(os.getpid()).ppid()
works both for Unix & Windows (even if os.getppid() doesn't exist on this platform)

ppid() is a member method, not variable, of Process, so the above needs to be changed to include the parenthesis.
Source: psutil documentation

If you don't want to use psutil (e.g. because your environment makes installing dependencies and IT request), here's how you can do it manually on Linux.
def get_parent_process_id(pid: int) -> int:
# Read /proc/<pid>/status and look for the line `PPid:\t120517\n`
with open(f"/proc/{pid}/status", encoding="ascii") as f:
for line in f.readlines():
if line.startswith("PPid:\t"):
return int(line[6:])
raise Exception(f"No PPid line found in /proc/{pid}/status")

Python: How to determine subprocess children have all finished running

I am trying to detect when an installation program finishes executing from within a Python script. Specifically, the application is the Oracle 10gR2 Database. Currently I am using the subprocess module with Popen. Ideally, I would simply use the wait() method to wait for the installation to finish executing, however, the documented command actually spawns child processes to handle the actual installation. Here is some sample code of the failing code:
import subprocess
OUI_DATABASE_10GR2_SUBPROCESS = ['sudo',
'-u',
'oracle',
os.path.join(DATABASE_10GR2_TMP_PATH,
'database',
'runInstaller'),
'-ignoreSysPrereqs',
'-silent',
'-noconfig',
'-responseFile '+ORACLE_DATABASE_10GR2_SILENT_RESPONSE]
oracle_subprocess = subprocess.Popen(OUI_DATABASE_10GR2_SUBPROCESS)
oracle_subprocess.wait()
There is a similar question here: Killing a subprocess including its children from python, but the selected answer does not address the children issue, instead it instructs the user to call directly the application to wait for. I am looking for a specific solution that will wait for all children of the subprocess. What if there are an unknown number of subprocesses? I will select the answer that addresses the issue of waiting for all children subprocesses to finish.
More clarity on failure: The child processes continue executing after the wait() command since that command only waits for the top level process (in this case it is 'sudo'). Here is a simple diagram of the known child processes in this problem:
Python subprocess module -> Sudo -> runInstaller -> java -> (unknown)

Ok, here is a trick that will work only under Unix. It is similar to one of the answers to this question: Ensuring subprocesses are dead on exiting Python program. The idea is to create a new process group. You can then wait for all processes in the group to terminate.
pid = os.fork()
if pid == 0:
os.setpgrp()
oracle_subprocess = subprocess.Popen(OUI_DATABASE_10GR2_SUBPROCESS)
oracle_subprocess.wait()
os._exit(0)
else:
os.waitpid(-pid)
I have not tested this. It creates an extra subprocess to be the leader of the process group, but avoiding that is (I think) quite a bit more complicated.
I found this web page to be helpful as well. http://code.activestate.com/recipes/278731-creating-a-daemon-the-python-way/

You can just use os.waitpid with the the pid set to -1, this will wait for all the subprocess of the current process until they finish:
import os
import sys
import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen([sys.executable,
'-c',
'import subprocess;'
'subprocess.Popen("sleep 5", shell=True).wait()'])
pid, status = os.waitpid(-1, 0)
print pid, status
This is the result of pstree <pid> of different subprocess forked:
python───python───sh───sleep
Hope this can help :)

Check out the following link http://www.oracle-wiki.net/startdocsruninstaller which details a flag you can use for the runInstaller command.
This flag is definitely available for 11gR2, but I have not got a 10g database to try out this flag for the runInstaller packaged with that version.
Regards

Everywhere I look seems to say it's not possible to solve this in the general case. I've whipped up a library called 'pidmon' that combines some answers for Windows and Linux and might do what you need.
I'm planning to clean this up and put it on github, possibly called 'pidmon' or something like that. I'll post a link if/when I get it up.
EDIT: It's available at http://github.com/dbarnett/python-pidmon.
I made a special waitpid function that accepts a graft_func argument so that you can loosely define what sort of processes you want to wait for when they're not direct children:
import pidmon
pidmon.waitpid(oracle_subprocess.pid, recursive=True,
graft_func=(lambda p: p.name == '???' and p.parent.pid == ???))
or, as a shotgun approach, to just wait for any processes started since the call to waitpid to stop again, do:
import pidmon
pidmon.waitpid(oracle_subprocess.pid, graft_func=(lambda p: True))
Note that this is still barely tested on Windows and seems very slow on Windows (but did I mention it's on github where it's easy to fork?). This should at least get you started, and if it works at all for you, I have plenty of ideas on how to optimize it.

How to start a background process in Python?

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.