How to start process as a daemon?

Question

I have created a service which consists of a web fronted (nginx), python runner glue handler (uwsgi) and my own python code (fetcher). I have made a script (deploy.sh) to start the difference services:

nginx
uwsgi --ini inifie.ini
python fetcher.py & disown

My question is regarding how I start my python daemon. I want it to run in the background. It should not print anything to my current terminal. If I add "print" calls to my fetcher script I currently see them in the terminal window.

So my question is: how do I start my fetcher.py script as a daemon?

Quick solution use "screen". Start your screen with "screen -S fetcher" then start your script and send it to background. Or follow this example http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1423345/can-i-run-a-python-script-as-a-service — deagh, Oct 26 '13 at 10:53
If you're on Fedora you could use systemd to glue everything together. — Cristian Ciupitu, Oct 27 '13 at 18:25

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 27 '13 at 02:19

4

Use the python-daemon package or use daemontools.

Please also see Process Management.

answered Oct 27 '13 at 02:19

Dennis Williamson

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '13 at 12:33

Do you want to do this from the shell script or from the Python program?

If from the shell script, it's quite simple:

nohup fetcher.py >/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null & disown

If you want to do it from the Python program, I suggest you look into using the python-daemon module, also probably available as a pre-made package for your favorite Unix-like OS.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 26 '13 at 16:50

2

I often do a fork like this in the python program:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    try:
        pid = os.fork()
        if pid > 0:
            sys.exit(0)
    except OSError:
        report( "unable to fork: %s" % sys.exc_info()[1])
        raise
    [program starts here ]

answered Oct 26 '13 at 16:50

Petter H

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It's not that simple. You should at least do a double fork, and also setsid(). And what about stdout/stderr? Simpler to just use the python-daemon module. – Teddy Oct 26 '13 at 20:27
1

True, it's not quite that simple, but at least he's pointing the poster toward an actual daemon vs a hack with nohup or screen. Handle cwd and standard file handles then you get even closer to an actual daemon. Do you run apache in a screen session? – toppledwagon Oct 27 '13 at 05:16

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 26 '13 at 14:20

1

Simple workaround is: nohup

nohup myprogram > myprogram.log &

edited Oct 26 '13 at 14:20

Scott Pack

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answered Oct 26 '13 at 11:49

Veniamin

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 27 '13 at 03:11

0

supervisord works well, and can be confied to send out alerts on failures

answered Oct 27 '13 at 03:11

nandoP

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How to start process as a daemon?

5 Answers5