Question

I want to launch a background Python job from a bash script and then gracefully kill it with SIGINT. This works fine from the shell, but I can’t seem to get it to work in a script.

loop.py:

#! /usr/bin/env python
if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        print 'starting loop'
        while True:
            pass
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print 'quitting loop'

From the shell I can interrupt it:

$ python loop.py &
[1] 15420
starting loop
$ kill -SIGINT 15420
quitting loop
[1]+  Done                    python loop.py

kill.sh:

#! /bin/bash
python loop.py &
PID=$!
echo "sending SIGINT to process $PID"
kill -SIGINT $PID

But from a script I can’t:

$ ./kill.sh 
starting loop
sending SIGINT to process 15452
$ ps ax | grep loop.py | grep -v grep
15452 pts/3    R      0:08 python loop.py

And, if it’s been launched from a script I can no longer kill it from the shell:

$ kill -SIGINT 15452
$ ps ax | grep loop.py | grep -v grep
15452 pts/3    R      0:34 python loop.py

I’m assuming I’m missing some fine point of bash job control.

Answer 1

You’re not registering a signal handler. Try the below. It seems to work fairly reliably. I think the rare exception is when it catches the signal before Python registers the script’s handler. Note that KeyboardInterrupt is only supposed to be raised, “when the user hits the interrupt key”. I think the fact that it works for a explicit (e.g. via kill) SIGINT at all is an accident of implementation.

import signal

def quit_gracefully(*args):
    print 'quitting loop'
    exit(0);

if __name__ == "__main__":
    signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, quit_gracefully)

    try:
        print 'starting loop'
        while True:
            pass
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        quit_gracefully()