Is there a way to change effective process name in Python?
Solution 1
Simply put, there's no portable way. You'll have to test for the system and use the preferred method for that system.
Further, I'm confused about what you mean by process names on Windows.
Do you mean a service name? I presume so, because nothing else really makes any sense (at least to my non-Windows using brain).
If so, you need to use Tim Golden's WMI interface and call the .Change method on the service... at least according to his tutorial.
For Linux none of the methods I found worked except for this poorly packaged module that sets argv[0] for you.
I don't even know if this will work on BSD variants (which does have a setproctitle system call). I'm pretty sure argv[0] won't work on Solaris.
Solution 2
I've recently written a Python module to change the process title in a portable way: check https://github.com/dvarrazzo/py-setproctitle
It is a wrapper around the code used by PostgreSQL to perform the title change. It is currently tested against Linux and Mac OS X: Windows (with limited functionality) and BSD portings are on the way.
Edit: as of July 2010, the module works with BSD and with limited functionality on Windows, and has been ported to Python 3.x.
Solution 3
actually you need 2 things on linux: modify argv[0]
from C
(for ps auxf
and friends) and call prctl
with PR_SET_NAME
flag.
There is absolutely no way to do first piece from python itself. Although, you can just change process name by calling prctl.
def set_proc_name(newname):
from ctypes import cdll, byref, create_string_buffer
libc = cdll.LoadLibrary('libc.so.6')
buff = create_string_buffer(len(newname)+1)
buff.value = newname
libc.prctl(15, byref(buff), 0, 0, 0)
def get_proc_name():
from ctypes import cdll, byref, create_string_buffer
libc = cdll.LoadLibrary('libc.so.6')
buff = create_string_buffer(128)
# 16 == PR_GET_NAME from <linux/prctl.h>
libc.prctl(16, byref(buff), 0, 0, 0)
return buff.value
import sys
# sys.argv[0] == 'python'
# outputs 'python'
get_proc_name()
set_proc_name('testing yeah')
# outputs 'testing yeah'
get_proc_name()
ps auxf
will show just 'python' after that :(. But top
and ps -A
will show new 'testing yeah' process name :). Also killall
and pkill
will work with new name.
btw, procname from googlecode also changes argv[0]
, thus, even, changes ps auxf
output.
UPDATE: The solution posted in this answer does not play nice sometimes on FreeBSD. I'm now using py-setproctitle stated in this answer for a year or so on various linux and freebsd boxes. No fails so far! Everybody should too! :). It uses almost the same code as PostgreSQL uses in its main database and child processes.
Solution 4
Have a look on setproctitle package
This is quite a portable version and works on many platforms.
pip install setproctitle
import setproctitle
setproctitle.setproctitle('new proc title as seen in top')
Solution 5
First, I'm not sure that simply settings argv[0]
in a C program portably changes the name shown in ps
. Maybe it does in some unixen, but my understanding is that it's not expected to.
Second, since Windows is specifically non-POSIX compliant, only a few things are "portable" between POSIX and non-POSIX. Since you specifically say 'ps', I'll assume that POSIX is your priority and Windows may not work.
More importantly, my understanding of changing argv[0]
is that it requires a call to exec
to make these changes. Specifically, the exec
call has both a path to an executable and a separate argv
list. Making your own call allows you to break the shell convention of putting the executable name in argv[0]
.
You have OS library process management which gives you direct access to the OS library for doing this. You should consider breaking your script into two parts -- a starter and the "real work". The starter establishes the run-time environment and exec's the real work with the desired parameters.
In C, you're replacing your own process with another. In Python, you're replacing the old Python interpreter with a new one that has a different argv[0]. Hopefully, it won't balk at this. Some programs check argv[0] to decide what they're doing.
You also have subprocess.popen that you can use to set your desired args and executable. In this case, however, the parent process should lingers around to collect the child when the child finishes. The parent may not be doing anything more than a Popen.wait
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Emilio
Updated on July 05, 2022Comments
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Emilio almost 2 years
Can I change effective process name of a Python script? I want to show a different name instead of the real name of the process when I get the system process list. In C I can set
strcpy(argv[0],"othername");
But in Python
argv[0] = "othername"
doesn't seem to work. When i get process list (with
ps ax
in my linux box) the real name doesn't change. I prefer a portable solution (or else one solution for posix and another for windows environments), if it exists.Thanks in advance
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anarcat over 8 yearssee also superuser.com/questions/427642/…, where bugs.python.org/issue5672 is mentionned
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Basj over 5 yearsIs there a solution nowadays for Windows? (maybe with Python 3.x?) More precisely: The "Windows Task Manager" (CTRL+SHIFT+ESCAPE), tab "Processes", should display a custom string in the first column "Image Name" rather than just python.exe or pythonw.exe. NB: another solution than duplicating python.exe to mycustomstring.exe ;)
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Emilio over 15 yearsBut if i run ps (process list in linux boxes) the process name remain exactly the same. Try
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Glenn Maynard over 14 yearsNo, changing argv in Linux (and likely other Unixes, but not all) does immediately change the visible process name, which is used by many widely-used programs to give descriptive names for their processes: both ssh and postgres do this, and some actively change their name on the fly to indicate their current status. A Python module could be written to do this, using the Py_GetArgcArgv API call.
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user over 10 yearsCan't install on windows.
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piro over 10 years@user never mind: it isn't very helpful on Windows but there's not much to do about it.
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KillianDS over 10 yearsIs there a way to change the arguments displayed by ps -f? I don't really care about the program name (always python), but I want to change the displayed arguments.
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piro over 10 years@KillianDS: do you mean you want the output of "ps -f" different from the one of "ps"? You can't have it afaik.
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bufh about 9 yearsI know it's late, but for new readers, consider also @MattWritesCode answer, quick and simple for CPython on Linux.
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Dakkaron about 7 yearsThis does not change the process name at all. It only changes Python's copy of argv. I would recommend deleting this obviously wrong answer.
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radtek over 6 yearsprocname doesn't work on PyPy (only on CPython) have to use setproctitle.
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Bachsau about 6 yearsThat is not a Python module. It is a C module.
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Christopher Barber about 5 yearsOn Mac OSX this works for ps but not for top or the Activity Monitor.
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David Parks over 4 yearsBeautiful simple solution here.
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MisterMiyagi almost 4 yearsThis does not appear to change the equivalent of
psutil.Process.name
on MacOS 10.14, but works on RHEL 7. -
Frederic over 3 yearsWorks on Linux perfectly. Does not really work on Windows, and acknowledged as such by the doc of
setproctitle
. A true Windows solution is most likely difficult. -
maxschlepzig almost 3 yearsAn equivalent and simpler implementation of your functions is to just write/read
/proc/self/comm
. See also: stackoverflow.com/a/68508813/427158