Python run process not as subprocess

Question

I have a telegram bot that I want to use to start another telegram bot. You cannot run two telegram bots within a single python script, so I have two python scripts: main.py and gs_main.py. When I run them concurrently in two seperate screen sessions everything is fine. However, starting gs_main.py from main.py is causing me headaches. My last try is as follows:

In main.py I have the following command to start gs_main.py:

def gostart(update: Update, context: CallbackContext) -> None:
    user = update.effective_user
    global goserver
    
    if user.id == USER_ID:
        goserver = os.system("./start_goserver.sh")

The contents of start_goserver.sh are as follows:

cd /home/ubuntu/gosharing
python3 gs_main.py

However, this seems to open gs_main.py as a subprocess of main.py since I am getting the following error:

Error while getting Updates: Conflict: terminated by other getUpdates request; make sure that only one bot instance is running
No error handlers are registered, logging exception.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/ext/updater.py", line 646, in _network_loop_retry
    if not action_cb():
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/ext/updater.py", line 597, in polling_action_cb
    updates = self.bot.get_updates(
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/ext/extbot.py", line 222, in get_updates
    updates = super().get_updates(
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/bot.py", line 130, in decorator
    result = func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/bot.py", line 2861, in get_updates
    self._post(
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/bot.py", line 295, in _post
    return self.request.post(
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/utils/request.py", line 361, in post
    result = self._request_wrapper(
  File "/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/telegram/utils/request.py", line 283, in _request_wrapper
    raise Conflict(message)
telegram.error.Conflict: Conflict: terminated by other getUpdates request; make sure that only one bot instance is running

My question is, how do I run gs_main.py without it being a subprocess of main.py?

Answer 1

You could try to send your both process to background if you use linux.

1. start your first script
2. press: CTRL+Z
3. type: bg
4. start your second script
5. press: CTRL+Z
6. type: bg

If you like to run both with a simple command, you could create a third script like this:

import os

os.spawnl(os.P_DETACH, python, 'script_1.py')
os.spawnl(os.P_DETACH, python, 'script_2.py')

You could find more information about spawnl function here:

Python 3 - spawnl

Answer 2

I manually decoupled the two scripts as follows. In my main.py I changed the command to this:

def gostart(update: Update, context: CallbackContext) -> None:
    user = update.effective_user
    global goserver
    
    if user.id == USER_ID:
        os.system("echo 1 > /home/ubuntu/gosharing/run")

Then, in /home/ubuntu/gosharing I created a second main.py with the following code:

import os

run = 0
prev = 0

while True:
    file = open("run", "rb")
    try:
        run = int(file.readline())
    except:
        pass
    file.close()
    
    if (prev == 0) & (run == 1):
        os.system("pkill -f gs_main.py && python3 gs_main.py > log &")
        print("starting server")
    if (prev == 1) & (run == 0):
        os.system("pkill -f gs_main.py")
        print("killing server")
    
    prev = run

It works:). Might not be the most elegant solution but it does the trick.