Kill not responding exe file in Python script

Question

I'm running a kind of touchy .exe file in Python to receive a couple of data measurements. The file should open, take the measurement, then close. The issue is sometimes it crashes and I need to be able to take these measurements every 10 minutes over a long period of time.

What I need is a 'check' to see if the .exe is not responding and if it's not, then to have it kill the process. Or to just kill the whole script after every measurement taken. The issue is that the script gets stuck when it tries to run the .exe file that's not responding.

Here's the script:

FNULL = open(os.devnull, 'a')   

filename = "current_pressure.log"

command = '"*SRH#\r"'

args = "httpget -r -o " + filename  + " -C 2 -S " + command + IP 

subprocess.call(args, stdout=FNULL, stderr=FNULL, shell=False)

Basically, need something like:

"if httpget.exe not responding, then kill process"

OR

"kill above script if running after longer than 20 seconds"

I would read httpget docs to find out whether it has deadline, timeout options. You could use timeout parameter with subprocess.call() on Python 3. — jfs
– jfs, Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 19:33

tdelaney · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-02 18:06:10Z

1

Use a timer to kill the process if its gone on too long. Here I've got two timers for a graceful and hard termination but you can just do the kill if you want.

import threading

FNULL = open(os.devnull, 'a')   
filename = "current_pressure.log"
command = '"*SRH#\r"'
args = "httpget -r -o " + filename  + " -C 2 -S " + command + IP 

proc = subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=FNULL, stderr=FNULL, shell=False)

nice = threading.Timer(20, proc.terminate)
nice.start()
mean = threading.Timer(22, proc.kill)
mean.start()
proc.wait()
nice.cancel()
mean.cancel()

answered Apr 2, 2015 at 18:06

tdelaney

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5 Comments

Nathan Miller Over a year ago

Awesome! That seems to be working. I'll let you know if I get any more crashes. Thank you so much!

Nathan Miller Over a year ago

It still crashes, I get a popup window that says "httpget.exe has stopped working", but now the program is able to keep running even with this open, so I guess the problem is solved. I don't mind the popups windows as long as it keeps running. Thanks again!

jfs Over a year ago

On Windows, kill() is an alias for terminate(). args is a string + shell=False means Windows here.

Nathan Miller Over a year ago

So I need to be able to leave the program running and taking measurements every 10 minutes. When it crashes, I get a popup window saying something like "httpget.exe is not responding", all I need to do to continue the program is press 'enter' or click the option in the popup window, then the program continues normally. Is there a way to make it so that 'httpget.exe' automatically just accepts that click option in the popup window when it's not responding? Or to quit the exe when it's not responding. Something that exists outside of my program, within the windows control panel or something?

tdelaney Over a year ago

@NathanMiller - that's a more difficult problem. Apparently its a GUI application so you are dependent on whether its developer gives you a scriptable way to run it (e.g., command line arguments to exit on error instead of a popup). There are a lot of GUI automation toolkits you could use to "drive" the application, but I don't use them and don't have a good suggestion about which ones are good.

Nitin Sutar · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-30 09:32:42Z

1

Generally, when a program hangs while working on windows we try to go to Task Manager and end the process of that particular program. When this approach fails, we experiment with some third party softwares to terminate it. However, there is even another better way for terminating such hanged programs automatically

http://www.problogbooster.com/2010/01/automatically-kills-non-responding.html

answered Jun 30, 2015 at 9:32

Nitin Sutar

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