Python library for Linux process management

Since you said this is a Linux server, calling the external ps binary is usually slower, uses more resources and is more error prone than using the information from /proc directly.

Since nobody else mentioned, one simple way is:

glob.glob('/proc/[0-9]*/')

Good luck.

To start/stop python sub processes you can use the subprocess module. To check whether they are running you might use psutil:

>>> import psutil
>>> pid = 1034  # some pid
>>> psutil.pid_exists(pid)
True
>>>

...or this (it will also check if the PID has been reused):

>>> p = psutil.Process(pid)
>>> p.is_running()
True
>>>

This is what i use. It uses procfs (so you are limited to Unix like systems, will not work on macs i think) and the previously mentioned glob. It also gets the cmdline, which allows you to identify the process. For killing the process you can use os.kill(signal.SIGTERM, pid). For using subprocess, please check this post Python, Popen and select - waiting for a process to terminate or a timeout

def list_processes():
    """
    This function will return an iterator with the process pid/cmdline tuple

    :return: pid, cmdline tuple via iterator
    :rtype: iterator

    >>> for procs in list_processes():
    >>>     print procs
    ('5593', '/usr/lib/mozilla/kmozillahelper')
    ('6353', 'pickup -l -t fifo -u')
    ('6640', 'kdeinit4: konsole [kdeinit]')
    ('6643', '/bin/bash')
    ('7451', '/usr/bin/python /usr/bin/ipython')
    """
    for pid_path in glob.glob('/proc/[0-9]*/'):

        # cmdline represents the command whith which the process was started
        f = open("%s/cmdline" % pid_path)
        pid = pid_path.split("/")[2] # get the PID
        # we replace the \x00 to spaces to make a prettier output from kernel
        cmdline = f.read().replace("\x00", " ").rstrip()
        f.close()

        yield (pid, cmdline)

Checking the list of running processes is accomplished (even by core utilities like "ps") by looking at the contents of the /proc directory.

As such, the library you're interested for querying running processes is the same as used for working with any other files and directories (i.e. sys or os, depending on the flavor you're after. Pay special attention to os.path though, it does most of what you're after). To terminate or otherwise interact with processes, you send them signals, which is accomplished with os.kill. Finally, you start new processes using os.popen and friends.