Ack! Zombie processes won't die!

[Brian]

From one script, I'm spawnv'ing another that will launch mpg123 to play a
specified mp3. Problem is that After the second script has launched
mpg123, it'll turn into a zombie process. It doesn't happen when I launch
it from the command line, so there's something wrong with the way I'm
calling it (I believe).

mp3pid = os.spawnv(os.P_ NOWAIT, "/oter/playfile.py", ["playfile", filename,
"0"])

Shouldn't this launch the script without waiting for it to finish?

[Keith Dart]

Re: Ack! Zombie processes won't die!

Brian wrote:[color=blue]
> From one script, I'm spawnv'ing another that will launch mpg123 to play a
> specified mp3. Problem is that After the second script has launched
> mpg123, it'll turn into a zombie process. It doesn't happen when I launch
> it from the command line, so there's something wrong with the way I'm
> calling it (I believe).
>
> mp3pid = os.spawnv(os.P_ NOWAIT, "/oter/playfile.py", ["playfile", filename,
> "0"])
>
> Shouldn't this launch the script without waiting for it to finish?[/color]

It does, but the OS keeps the process information around until you
"wait" on it, with "reaps", or collects the exit status then. You can do
this asyncronously with a SIGCHLD handler. However, this has already
been done.

In the the pyNMS package on sourceforge
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/pynms) there is a module called
"proctools" . It has a process manager that does this for you.


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Keith Dart <kdart@kdart.co m>
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