[New-bugs-announce] [issue39535] multiprocessing.Process file descriptor resource leak

[Robert Pierce]

New submission from Robert Pierce <robert.pierce at decisionnext.com>:

multiprocessing.Process opens a FIFO to the child. This FIFO is not documented the the Process class API and it's purpose is not clear from the documentation. It is a minor documentation bug that the class creates non-transparent resource utilization.

The primary behavioral bug is that incorrect handling of this FIFO creates a resource leak, since the file descriptor is not closed on join(), or even when the parent Process object goes out of scope.

The effect of this bug is that programs generating large numbers of Process objects will hit system resource limits of open file descriptors.

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assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation, Library (Lib)
files: proc_test.py
messages: 361273
nosy: Robert Pierce, docs at python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: multiprocessing.Process file descriptor resource leak
type: resource usage
versions: Python 3.6
Added file: https://bugs.python.org/file48878/proc_test.py

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue39535>
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