I have a python daemon running as a part of my web app/ How can I quickly check (using python) if my daemon is running and, if not, launch it?

I want to do it that way to fix any crashes of the daemon, and so the script does not have to be run manually, it will automatically run as soon as it is called and then stay running.

How can i check (using python) if my script is running?

Drop a pidfile somewhere (e.g. /tmp). Then you can check to see if the process is running by checking to see if the PID in the file exists. Don’t forget to delete the file when you shut down cleanly, and check for it when you start up.

#/usr/bin/env python

import os
import sys

pid = str(os.getpid())
pidfile = "/tmp/mydaemon.pid"

if os.path.isfile(pidfile):
    print "%s already exists, exiting" % pidfile
    sys.exit()
file(pidfile, 'w').write(pid)
try:
    # Do some actual work here
finally:
    os.unlink(pidfile)

Then you can check to see if the process is running by checking to see if the contents of /tmp/mydaemon.pid are an existing process. Monit (mentioned above) can do this for you, or you can write a simple shell script to check it for you using the return code from ps.

ps up `cat /tmp/mydaemon.pid ` >/dev/null && echo "Running" || echo "Not running"

For extra credit, you can use the atexit module to ensure that your program cleans up its pidfile under any circumstances (when killed, exceptions raised, etc.).

A technique that is handy on a Linux system is using domain sockets:

import socket
import sys
import time

def get_lock(process_name):
    # Without holding a reference to our socket somewhere it gets garbage
    # collected when the function exits
    get_lock._lock_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_UNIX, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)

    try:
        # The null byte (\0) means the socket is created 
        # in the abstract namespace instead of being created 
        # on the file system itself.
        # Works only in Linux
        get_lock._lock_socket.bind('\0' + process_name)
        print 'I got the lock'
    except socket.error:
        print 'lock exists'
        sys.exit()


get_lock('running_test')
while True:
    time.sleep(3)

It is atomic and avoids the problem of having lock files lying around if your process gets sent a SIGKILL

You can read in the documentation for socket.close that sockets are automatically closed when garbage collected.

The pid library can do exactly this.

from pid import PidFile

with PidFile():
  do_something()

It will also automatically handle the case where the pidfile exists but the process is not running.

Of course the example from Dan will not work as it should be.

Indeed, if the script crash, rise an exception, or does not clean pid file, the script will be run multiple times.

I suggest the following based from another website:

This is to check if there is already a lock file existing

\#/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys
if os.access(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"), os.F_OK):
        #if the lockfile is already there then check the PID number
        #in the lock file
        pidfile = open(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"), "r")
        pidfile.seek(0)
        old_pid = pidfile.readline()
        # Now we check the PID from lock file matches to the current
        # process PID
        if os.path.exists("/proc/%s" % old_pid):
                print "You already have an instance of the program running"
                print "It is running as process %s," % old_pid
                sys.exit(1)
        else:
                print "File is there but the program is not running"
                print "Removing lock file for the: %s as it can be there because of the program last time it was run" % old_pid
                os.remove(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"))

This is part of code where we put a PID file in the lock file

pidfile = open(os.path.expanduser("~/.lockfile.vestibular.lock"), "w")
pidfile.write("%s" % os.getpid())
pidfile.close()

This code will check the value of pid compared to existing running process., avoiding double execution.

I hope it will help.

There are very good packages for restarting processes on UNIX. One that has a great tutorial about building and configuring it is monit. With some tweaking you can have a rock solid proven technology keeping up your daemon.

My solution is to check for the process and command line arguments Tested on windows and ubuntu linux

import psutil
import os

def is_running(script):
    for q in psutil.process_iter():
        if q.name().startswith('python'):
            if len(q.cmdline())>1 and script in q.cmdline()[1] and q.pid !=os.getpid():
                print("'{}' Process is already running".format(script))
                return True

    return False


if not is_running("test.py"):
    n = input("What is Your Name? ")
    print ("Hello " + n)

There are a myriad of options. One method is using system calls or python libraries that perform such calls for you. The other is simply to spawn out a process like:

ps ax | grep processName

and parse the output. Many people choose this approach, it isn’t necessarily a bad approach in my view.

Came across this old question looking for solution myself.

Use psutil:

import psutil
import sys
from subprocess import Popen

for process in psutil.process_iter():
    if process.cmdline() == ['python', 'your_script.py']:
        sys.exit('Process found: exiting.')

print('Process not found: starting it.')
Popen(['python', 'your_script.py'])

I’m a big fan of Supervisor for managing daemons. It’s written in Python, so there are plenty of examples of how to interact with or extend it from Python. For your purposes the XML-RPC process control API should work nicely.

Try this other version

def checkPidRunning(pid):        
    '''Check For the existence of a unix pid.
    '''
    try:
        os.kill(pid, 0)
    except OSError:
        return False
    else:
        return True

# Entry point
if __name__ == '__main__':
    pid = str(os.getpid())
    pidfile = os.path.join("/", "tmp", __program__+".pid")

    if os.path.isfile(pidfile) and checkPidRunning(int(file(pidfile,'r').readlines()[0])):
            print "%s already exists, exiting" % pidfile
            sys.exit()
    else:
        file(pidfile, 'w').write(pid)

    # Do some actual work here
    main()

    os.unlink(pidfile)

Rather than developing your own PID file solution (which has more subtleties and corner cases than you might think), have a look at supervisord — this is a process control system that makes it easy to wrap job control and daemon behaviors around an existing Python script.

The other answers are great for things like cron jobs, but if you’re running a daemon you should monitor it with something like daemontools.

ps ax | grep processName

if yor debug script in pycharm always exit

pydevd.py --multiproc --client 127.0.0.1 --port 33882 --file processName

try this:

#/usr/bin/env python
import os, sys, atexit

try:
    # Set PID file
    def set_pid_file():
        pid = str(os.getpid())
        f = open('myCode.pid', 'w')
        f.write(pid)
        f.close()

    def goodby():
        pid = str('myCode.pid')
        os.remove(pid)

    atexit.register(goodby)
    set_pid_file()
    # Place your code here

except KeyboardInterrupt:
    sys.exit(0)

Here is more useful code (with checking if exactly python executes the script):

#! /usr/bin/env python

import os
from sys import exit


def checkPidRunning(pid):
    global script_name
    if pid<1:
        print "Incorrect pid number!"
        exit()
    try:
        os.kill(pid, 0)
    except OSError:
        print "Abnormal termination of previous process."
        return False
    else:
        ps_command = "ps -o command= %s | grep -Eq 'python .*/%s'" % (pid,script_name)
        process_exist = os.system(ps_command)
        if process_exist == 0:
            return True
        else:
            print "Process with pid %s is not a Python process. Continue..." % pid
            return False


if __name__ == '__main__':
    script_name = os.path.basename(__file__)
    pid = str(os.getpid())
    pidfile = os.path.join("/", "tmp/", script_name+".pid")
    if os.path.isfile(pidfile):
        print "Warning! Pid file %s existing. Checking for process..." % pidfile
        r_pid = int(file(pidfile,'r').readlines()[0])
        if checkPidRunning(r_pid):
            print "Python process with pid = %s is already running. Exit!" % r_pid
            exit()
        else:
            file(pidfile, 'w').write(pid)
    else:
        file(pidfile, 'w').write(pid)

# main programm
....
....

os.unlink(pidfile)

Here is string:

ps_command = "ps -o command= %s | grep -Eq 'python .*/%s'" % (pid,script_name)

returns 0 if “grep” is successful, and the process “python” is currently running with the name of your script as a parameter .

A simple example if you only are looking for a process name exist or not:

import os

def pname_exists(inp):
    os.system('ps -ef > /tmp/psef')
    lines=open('/tmp/psef', 'r').read().split('\n')
    res=[i for i in lines if inp in i]
    return True if res else False

Result:
In [21]: pname_exists('syslog')
Out[21]: True

In [22]: pname_exists('syslog_')
Out[22]: False

Consider the following example to solve your problem:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: latin-1 -*-

import os, sys, time, signal

def termination_handler (signum,frame):
    global running
    global pidfile
    print 'You have requested to terminate the application...'
    sys.stdout.flush()
    running = 0
    os.unlink(pidfile)

running = 1
signal.signal(signal.SIGINT,termination_handler)

pid = str(os.getpid())
pidfile = '/tmp/'+os.path.basename(__file__).split('.')[0]+'.pid'

if os.path.isfile(pidfile):
    print "%s already exists, exiting" % pidfile
    sys.exit()
else:
    file(pidfile, 'w').write(pid)

# Do some actual work here

while running:
  time.sleep(10)

I suggest this script because it can be executed one time only.

Using bash to look for a process with the current script’s name. No extra file.

import commands
import os
import time
import sys

def stop_if_already_running():
    script_name = os.path.basename(__file__)
    l = commands.getstatusoutput("ps aux | grep -e '%s' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'| awk '{print $2}'" % script_name)
    if l[1]:
        sys.exit(0);

To test, add

stop_if_already_running()
print "running normally"
while True:
    time.sleep(3)

This is what I use in Linux to avoid starting a script if already running:

import os
import sys


script_name = os.path.basename(__file__)
pidfile = os.path.join("/tmp", os.path.splitext(script_name)[0]) + ".pid"


def create_pidfile():
    if os.path.exists(pidfile):
        with open(pidfile, "r") as _file:
            last_pid = int(_file.read())

        # Checking if process is still running
        last_process_cmdline = "/proc/%d/cmdline" % last_pid
        if os.path.exists(last_process_cmdline):
            with open(last_process_cmdline, "r") as _file:
                cmdline = _file.read()
            if script_name in cmdline:
                raise Exception("Script already running...")

    with open(pidfile, "w") as _file:
        pid = str(os.getpid())
        _file.write(pid)


def main():
    """Your application logic goes here"""


if __name__ == "__main__":
    create_pidfile()
    main()

This approach works good without any dependency on an external module.

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.

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.

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.

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'

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)

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.