Question

As part of an automated test, I have a python script that needs to call two shell scripts that start two different servers that need to interact after the calling script ends. (It’s actually a jython script, but I’m not sure that matters at this point.) What can I do to ensure that the servers stay up after the python script ends?

At this point they’re called something like this:

def runcmd(str, sleep):
    debug('Inside runcmd, executing: ' + str)
    os.chdir("/new/dir/")
    directory = os.getcwd()
    print 'current dir: '+ directory
    os.system(str)

t = threading.Thread(
        target=runcmd,
        args=( cmd, 50,)
    )

Answer 1

Python threads will all die with Python. Also, os.system is blocking. But that’s okay — if the command that os.system() runs launches a new process (but not a child process), all will be fine. On Windows, for instance, if the command begins with “start” the “start”‘d process will remain after Python dies.

EDIT: nohup is an equivalent to start on Linux. (Thanks to S. Lott).