how to to terminate process using python's multiprocessing

Question

I have some code that needs to run against several other systems that may hang or have problems not under my control. I would like to use python\'s multiprocessing to spawn

Answer 1

The way Python multiprocessing handles processes is a bit confusing.

From the multiprocessing guidelines:

Joining zombie processes

On Unix when a process finishes but has not been joined it becomes a zombie. There should never be very many because each time a new process starts (or active_children() is called) all completed processes which have not yet been joined will be joined. Also calling a finished process’s Process.is_alive will join the process. Even so it is probably good practice to explicitly join all the processes that you start.

In order to avoid a process to become a zombie, you need to call it's join() method once you kill it.

If you want a simpler way to deal with the hanging calls in your system you can take a look at pebble.