How to terminate process from Python using pid?

I wanted to do the same thing as, but I wanted to do it in the one file.

So the logic would be:

• if a script with my name is running, kill it, then exit
• if a script with my name is not running, do stuff

I modified the answer by Bakuriu and came up with this:

from os import getpid
from sys import argv, exit
import psutil  ## pip install psutil

myname = argv[0]
mypid = getpid()
for process in psutil.process_iter():
    if process.pid != mypid:
        for path in process.cmdline():
            if myname in path:
                print "process found"
                process.terminate()
                exit()

## your program starts here...

Running the script will do whatever the script does. Running another instance of the script will kill any existing instance of the script.

I use this to display a little PyGTK calendar widget which runs when I click the clock. If I click and the calendar is not up, the calendar displays. If the calendar is running and I click the clock, the calendar disappears.

Using the awesome psutil library it's pretty simple:

p = psutil.Process(pid)
p.terminate()  #or p.kill()

If you don't want to install a new library, you can use the os module:

import os
import signal

os.kill(pid, signal.SIGTERM) #or signal.SIGKILL 

See also the os.kill documentation.

---

If you are interested in starting the command python StripCore.py if it is not running, and killing it otherwise, you can use psutil to do this reliably.

Something like:

import psutil
from subprocess import Popen

for process in psutil.process_iter():
    if process.cmdline() == ['python', 'StripCore.py']:
        print('Process found. Terminating it.')
        process.terminate()
        break
else:
    print('Process not found: starting it.')
    Popen(['python', 'StripCore.py'])

Sample run:

$python test_strip.py   #test_strip.py contains the code above
Process not found: starting it.
$python test_strip.py 
Process found. Terminating it.
$python test_strip.py 
Process not found: starting it.
$killall python
$python test_strip.py 
Process not found: starting it.
$python test_strip.py 
Process found. Terminating it.
$python test_strip.py 
Process not found: starting it.

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Note: In previous psutil versions cmdline was an attribute instead of a method.