How to terminate a python subprocess launched with shell=True
Use a process group so as to enable sending a signal to all the process in the groups. For that, you should attach a session id to the parent process of the spawned/child processes, which is a shell in your case. This will make it the group leader of the processes. So now, when a signal is sent to the process group leader, it's transmitted to all of the child processes of this group.
Here's the code:
import os
import signal
import subprocess
# The os.setsid() is passed in the argument preexec_fn so
# it's run after the fork() and before exec() to run the shell.
pro = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
shell=True, preexec_fn=os.setsid)
os.killpg(os.getpgid(pro.pid), signal.SIGTERM) # Send the signal to all the process groups
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
p.kill()
p.kill()
ends up killing the shell process and cmd
is still running.
I found a convenient fix this by:
p = subprocess.Popen("exec " + cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
This will cause cmd to inherit the shell process, instead of having the shell launch a child process, which does not get killed. p.pid
will be the id of your cmd process then.
p.kill()
should work.
I don't know what effect this will have on your pipe though.