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This patch (to python 2.7 trunk) allows to call prctl() function from
Linux kernel to change the process name. It adds two methods to the os
module: os.getprocname() and os.setprocname().
Working example:
marcelo@marcelo-laptop:~/src/pytrunk$ ./python
Python 2.7a0 (trunk:71261M, Apr 5 2009, 16:32:55)
[GCC 4.3.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
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>>> os.getprocname()
'./python'
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>>> os.getpid()
5601
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>>> os.setprocname('hello_process_name')
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>>> os.getprocname()
'hello_process_name'
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Before changing the process name:
marcelo@marcelo-laptop:~/src/pytrunk$ ps -fax | grep 5601
Warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See
http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
 5601 pts/2 S+ 0:00 | \_ ./python
 5611 pts/3 S+ 0:00 \_ grep 5601
After changing the process name:
marcelo@marcelo-laptop:~/src/pytrunk$ ps -fax | grep 5601
Warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See
http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
 5601 pts/2 S+ 0:00 | \_ hello_process_name
 5635 pts/3 S+ 0:00 \_ grep 5601
And "killall hello_process_name" works, Gnome Process monitor shows it
fine too. By now this is Linux only, but I hope to implement it also for
BSD (FreeBSD has it[1], OpenBSD [2] and NetBSD [3] too).
[1] http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/gen/setproctitle.c?v=FREEBSD-LIBC
[2]
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/lib/libc/gen/setproctitle.c?rev=1.11;content-type=text%2Fx-cvsweb-markup
[3]
http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/lib/libc/gen/setproctitle.c?rev=1.22&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&only_with_tag=MAIN
Regards