Killing the children with the parent

Question

I have a program spawning and communicating with CPU heavy, unstable processes, not created by me. If my app crashes or is killed by SIGKILL, I want the subproc

Answer 1

Actually I found that your original approach worked just fine for me - here's the exact example code I tested with which worked:

echoer.py

#!/bin/env python

import time
import sys
i = 0
try:
    while True:
        i += 1
        print i
        time.sleep(1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    print "\nechoer caught KeyboardInterrupt"
    exit(0)

parentProc.py

#!/bin/env python

import ctypes
import subprocess
import time

libc = ctypes.CDLL('/lib64/libc.so.6')
PR_SET_PDEATHSIG = 1
SIGINT = 2
SIGTERM = 15

def set_death_signal(signal):
    libc.prctl(PR_SET_PDEATHSIG, signal)

def set_death_signal_int():
    set_death_signal(SIGINT)

def set_death_signal_term():
    set_death_signal(SIGTERM)

#subprocess.Popen(['./echoer.py'], preexec_fn=set_death_signal_term)
subprocess.Popen(['./echoer.py'], preexec_fn=set_death_signal_int)
time.sleep(1.5)
print "parentProc exiting..."