How to stop a shell script (running a infinite loop ) from python?

Question

I have a shell script (test.sh -> example shown below) which has a infinte while loop and prints some data to screen. I am calling all my .sh scripts from python and I need to stop the test.sh before calling my other commands I am using python 2.7 and linux system is on propritary hardware where I cannot install any python modules.

Here is my test.sh

#!/bin/sh
while :
do
        echo "this code is in infinite while loop"
        sleep 1
done

Here is my python Scripts

import subprocess as SP
SP.call(['./test.sh'])    # I need to stop the test.sh in order for python to
                          # go and execute more commands and call  
                          # another_script.sh
# some code statements

SP.call(['./another_script.sh'])

Well, quick google search made me look into subprocess call and Popen modules . and Popen has a terminate option and it doesn't work for me (or) I'm doing something wrong here

cmd=['test.sh']
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
p.terminate()

Any other suggestions on how I can stop the test.sh from python are highly appreciated

PS: I don't mind to run the test.sh for like T seconds and then stop it

Answer 1

I use tmux for these type of processes, python has a good package libtmux which should solve your problem.

Basically you create a tmux session:

import libtmux
server = libtmux.Server()
session = server.new_session(session_name='my_session_name')

then you create a window to run the command in

window = session.new_window(attach=False, window_name='my_window_name')
command = './my_bash_file.sh'
window.select_pane('0').send_keys(command, enter=True)

You'll be able to run subsequent commands right after this one. To access the tmux session from your bash terminal use tmux attach -t my_session_name you'll then be in a tmux window, the one which ran your bash script.

To kill the tmux window use window.kill_window() there's a lot of options look at the libtmux docs.

The project aileen has some useful tmux commands if you want to see some more implementations.