[python] How to terminate a python subprocess launched with shell=True

I'm launching a subprocess with the following command:

p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)

However, when I try to kill using:

p.terminate()

or

p.kill()

The command keeps running in the background, so I was wondering how can I actually terminate the process.

Note that when I run the command with:

p = subprocess.Popen(cmd.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

It does terminate successfully when issuing the p.terminate().

Send the signal to all the processes in group

    self.proc = Popen(commands, 
            stdout=PIPE, 
            stderr=STDOUT, 
            universal_newlines=True, 
            preexec_fn=os.setsid)

    os.killpg(os.getpgid(self.proc.pid), signal.SIGHUP)
    os.killpg(os.getpgid(self.proc.pid), signal.SIGTERM)

Although it is an old question, it has a high google rank. so I decided to post an answer with the new method someone can use in python 3 to manage this easily and with confidence. as of python 3.5 you there is a new method added to subprocess package called run().

As the documentation says:

It is the recommended approach to invoking sub processes for all use cases it can handle. For more advanced use cases, the underlying Popen interface can be used directly.

The subprocess.run():

Runs a command described by args. Wait for the command to complete, then return a CompletedProcess instance.

for example one can run this snippet within a python console:

>>> subprocess.run(["ls", "-l"])  # doesn't capture output
CompletedProcess(args=['ls', '-l'], returncode=0)

P.S. In case of the OP's specific question, I wasn't able to reproduce his problem. commands I run with popen() are terminating properly.

There is a very simple way for Python 3.5 or + (Actually tested on Python 3.8)

import subprocess, signal, time
p = subprocess.Popen(['cmd'], shell=True)
time.sleep(5) #Wait 5 secs before killing
p.send_signal(signal.CTRL_C_EVENT)

Then, your code may crash at some point if you have a keyboard input detection, or sth like this. In this case, on the line of code/function where the error is given, just use:

try:
    FailingCode #here goes the code which is raising KeyboardInterrupt
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    pass

What this code is doing is just sending a "CTRL+C" signal to the running process, what will cause the process to get killed.

As Sai said, the shell is the child, so signals are intercepted by it -- best way I've found is to use shell=False and use shlex to split the command line:

if isinstance(command, unicode):
    cmd = command.encode('utf8')
args = shlex.split(cmd)

p = subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

Then p.kill() and p.terminate() should work how you expect.

p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
p.kill()

p.kill() ends up killing the shell process and cmd is still running.

I found a convenient fix this by:

p = subprocess.Popen("exec " + cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)

This will cause cmd to inherit the shell process, instead of having the shell launch a child process, which does not get killed. p.pid will be the id of your cmd process then.

p.kill() should work.

I don't know what effect this will have on your pipe though.

When shell=True the shell is the child process, and the commands are its children. So any SIGTERM or SIGKILL will kill the shell but not its child processes, and I don't remember a good way to do it. The best way I can think of is to use shell=False, otherwise when you kill the parent shell process, it will leave a defunct shell process.

If you can use psutil, then this works perfectly:

import subprocess

import psutil


def kill(proc_pid):
    process = psutil.Process(proc_pid)
    for proc in process.children(recursive=True):
        proc.kill()
    process.kill()


proc = subprocess.Popen(["infinite_app", "param"], shell=True)
try:
    proc.wait(timeout=3)
except subprocess.TimeoutExpired:
    kill(proc.pid)

None of these answers worked for me so Im leaving the code that did work. In my case even after killing the process with .kill() and getting a .poll() return code the process didn't terminate.

Following the subprocess.Popen documentation:

"...in order to cleanup properly a well-behaved application should kill the child process and finish communication..."

proc = subprocess.Popen(...)
try:
    outs, errs = proc.communicate(timeout=15)
except TimeoutExpired:
    proc.kill()
    outs, errs = proc.communicate()

In my case I was missing the proc.communicate() after calling proc.kill(). This cleans the process stdin, stdout ... and does terminate the process.

I could do it using

from subprocess import Popen

process = Popen(command, shell=True)
Popen("TASKKILL /F /PID {pid} /T".format(pid=process.pid))

it killed the cmd.exe and the program that i gave the command for.

(On Windows)

what i feel like we could use:

import os
import signal
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)

os.killpg(os.getpgid(pro.pid), signal.SIGINT)

this will not kill all your task but the process with the p.pid

I know this is an old question but this may help someone looking for a different method. This is what I use on windows to kill processes that I've called.

si = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
si.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
subprocess.call(["taskkill", "/IM", "robocopy.exe", "/T", "/F"], startupinfo=si)

/IM is the image name, you can also do /PID if you want. /T kills the process as well as the child processes. /F force terminates it. si, as I have it set, is how you do this without showing a CMD window. This code is used in python 3.

I have not seen this mentioned here, so I am putting it out there in case someone needs it. If all you want to do is to make sure that your subprocess terminates successfully, you could put it in a context manager. For example, I wanted my standard printer to print an out image and using the context manager ensured that the subprocess terminated.

import subprocess

with open(filename,'rb') as f:
    img=f.read()
with subprocess.Popen("/usr/bin/lpr", stdin=subprocess.PIPE) as lpr:
    lpr.stdin.write(img)
print('Printed image...')

I believe this method is also cross-platform.