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
How does
subprocess.CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUPrelate to this?our testing sugggests that setsid != setpgid, and that os.pgkill only kills subprocesses that still have the same process group id. processes that have changed process group are not killed, even though they may still have the same session id...
@PiotrDobrogost:
CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUPcan be used to emulatestart_new_session=Trueon WindowsI would not recommend doing os.setsid(), since it has other effects as well. Among others, it disconnects the controlling TTY and makes the new process a process group leader. See win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/lk/lk-10.html
How would you do this in Windows?
setsidis only available on *nix systems.