[New-bugs-announce] [issue10641] kill_python sometimes fails to kill processes on buildbots

[David Bolen]

New submission from David Bolen <db3l.net at gmail.com>:

On the XP and Win7 buildbots, kill_python sometimes fails to kill hung processes.  I caught one instance recently and gathered some information though not yet enough to identify the issue.  I can say that no processes are killed and no error messages displayed.  I think that implies either a process ownership-related snapshot failure (which can exit without error) or a failure to identify the processes.

I noticed issue10136 and considered it might be related, but in testing I found cases where the exact same usage of kill_python as this failing case worked fine, whereas if it was a path mismatch problem I would expect it to fail consistently. 

I have attached a log showing the hung processes, attempt to use kill_python, and final successful operation with the pskill utility.

In this case it was important to restore the buildbot quickly, but if I can catch it again I'll try to add some debugging code to kill_python first.

One thing that confused me along the way is that kill_python is only run at the beginning of a build and not as part of the clean process.  So there are cases where I have hung processes around, but they turn out to be killable when the next build starts.  I'm wondering if kill_python shouldn't perhaps be used on every clean operation too.

-- David

----------
components: Build
files: kill_python.log
messages: 123510
nosy: db3l
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: kill_python sometimes fails to kill processes on buildbots
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2
Added file: http://bugs.python.org/file19964/kill_python.log

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue10641>
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