How to force a thread to stop

[Carl J. Van Arsdall]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> On 2006-07-25 13:30:22, Carl J. Van Arsdall wrote:
>
>   
>>> Running os.system() in multiple threads strikes me as kind of whacked.
>>> Won't they all compete to read and write stdin/stdout simultaneously? 
>>>
>>>       
>> Unfortunately this is due to the nature of the problem I am tasked with 
>> solving.  I have a large computing farm, these os.system calls are often 
>> things like ssh that do work on locations remote from the initial python 
>> task.  
>>     
>
> [...]
>
>   
>> Again, the problem I'm trying to solve doesn't work like this.  I've been
>> working on a framework to be run across a large number of distributed
>> nodes (here's where you throw out the "duh, use a distributed
>> technology" in my face).  The thing is, I'm only writing the framework,
>> the framework will work with modules, lots of them, which will be
>> written by other people.  Its going to be impossible to get people to
>> write hundreds of modules that constantly check for status messages.  
>>     
>
> Doesn't this sound like a case for using processes instead of threads?
> Where you don't have control over the thread, you can use a process and get
> the separation you need to be able to kill this task.
>
> Alternatively you could possibly provide a base class for the threads that
> handles the things you need every thread to handle. They'd not have to
> write it then; they'd not even have to know too much about it.
>
> Gerhard
>
>   
I'd be all for using processes but setting up communication between 
processes would be difficult wouldn't it?  I mean, threads have shared 
memory so making sure all threads know the current system state is an 
easy thing.  With processes wouldn't I have to setup some type of 
server/client design, where one process has the system state and then 
the other processes constantly probe the host when they need the current 
system state? 




-- 

Carl J. Van Arsdall
cvanarsdall at mvista.com
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