''' We have faced an issue with forking processes on RHEL 5.10. When parent process consumes a realy big amount of memory fork call becomes very slow because it needs to copy memory pages from parent to child process. To overcome the issue we use posix_spawn function. The function calls vfork followed by execve call. This avoids copying of memory pages and saves time but it also prevents us from redirecting standard input and output because when it is requested posix_spawn function uses fork instead of vfork and we have the slowdown again. To make the IO redirection we do not start a requested sub-process immidiately but use intermediate python script which redirects the IO. The whole call chain looks like this: Popen("/foo/bar") -> fork -> execve(["python", __file__]) -> execve("/foo/bar") All parameters needed for I/O redirection are passed in pickle via temporary file. ''' import sys if sys.platform in ('linux2', 'darwin'): import types import time import os import cPickle as pickle import fcntl try: cloexec_flag = fcntl.FD_CLOEXEC except AttributeError: cloexec_flag = 1 def _set_cloexec_flag(fd, cloexec=True): ''' Utility function to modify close-on-exec flag of specified file descriptor ''' old = fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_GETFD) if cloexec: fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFD, old | cloexec_flag) else: fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFD, old & ~cloexec_flag) if __name__ == '__main__': try: MAXFD = os.sysconf("SC_OPEN_MAX") except: MAXFD = 256 try: from os import closerange except ImportError: def _close_fds(): ''' Closes all open file descriptors ''' for i in xrange(3, MAXFD): try: os.close(i) except: pass else: _close_fds = lambda: closerange(3, MAXFD) def do_execv(args=None, executable=None, close_fds=None, cwd=None, env=None, shell=None, p2cread=None, p2cwrite=None, c2pread=None, c2pwrite=None, errread=None, errwrite=None, ): ''' The function redirects IO, prepares command-line, sets up environment and executes execve function. ''' if isinstance(args, types.StringTypes): args = [args] else: args = list(args) if shell: args = [executable or "/bin/sh", "-c"] + args if executable is None: executable = args[0] # Close parent's pipe ends for parent_end, child_end in ((p2cwrite, p2cread), (c2pread, c2pwrite), (errread, errwrite)): if parent_end is not None: os.close(parent_end) if child_end is not None: _set_cloexec_flag(True) # When duping fds, if there arises a situation # where one of the fds is either 0, 1 or 2, it # is possible that it is overwritten (#12607). if c2pwrite == 0: c2pwrite = os.dup(c2pwrite) if errwrite == 0 or errwrite == 1: errwrite = os.dup(errwrite) # Dup fds for child def _dup2(a, b): # dup2() removes the CLOEXEC flag but # we must do it ourselves if dup2() # would be a no-op (issue #10806). if a == b: _set_cloexec_flag(a, False) elif a is not None: os.dup2(a, b) _dup2(p2cread, 0) _dup2(c2pwrite, 1) _dup2(errwrite, 2) # Close pipe fds. Make sure we don't close the # same fd more than once, or standard fds. closed = set([ None ]) for fd in [p2cread, c2pwrite, errwrite]: if fd not in closed and fd > 2: os.close(fd) closed.add(fd) # Close all other fds, if asked for if close_fds: _close_fds() if cwd is not None: os.chdir(cwd) if env is None: os.execvp(executable, args) else: os.execvpe(executable, args, env) # This exitcode won't be reported to applications, so it # really doesn't matter what we return. os._exit(255) with open(sys.argv[1], 'rb') as input_data: params = pickle.load(input_data) os.unlink(sys.argv[1]) do_execv(**params) else: # __name__ <> '__main__' import tempfile import ctypes # We support only Linux and Mac OS X now. libc = ctypes.CDLL("libc.so.6" if 'linux' in sys.platform else 'libc.dylib', use_errno=True) posix_spawn = libc.posix_spawn posix_spawn.restype = ctypes.c_int posix_spawn.argtypes = ( ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int), # ppid ctypes.c_char_p, # executable ctypes.c_void_p, # file_actions ctypes.c_void_p, # attrp ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char_p), #argv ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char_p), #env ) def _wrap_execute_child(klass): wrapped_execute_child = klass._execute_child def _execute_child(self, args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds, cwd, env, universal_newlines, startupinfo, creationflags, shell, p2cread, p2cwrite, c2pread, c2pwrite, errread, errwrite): if preexec_fn: return wrapped_execute_child(self, args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds, cwd, env, universal_newlines, startupinfo, creationflags, shell, p2cread, p2cwrite, c2pread, c2pwrite, errread, errwrite) for fd in (p2cread, p2cwrite, c2pread, c2pwrite, errread, errwrite): if fd is not None: _set_cloexec_flag(fd, False) data = dict( args=args, executable=executable, close_fds=close_fds, cwd=cwd, env=env, shell=shell, p2cread=p2cread, p2cwrite=p2cwrite, c2pread=c2pread, c2pwrite=c2pwrite, errread=errread, errwrite=errwrite, ) with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(delete=False) as the_file: pickle.dump(data, the_file, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL) argv = (ctypes.c_char_p * 4)( sys.executable, __file__, the_file.name, 0) pid = ctypes.c_int() try: if posix_spawn(ctypes.byref(pid), ctypes.c_char_p(sys.executable), ctypes.c_void_p(), ctypes.c_void_p(), ctypes.cast(argv, ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char_p)), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_char_p)()): errno = ctypes.get_errno() try: os.unlink(the_file.name) except: pass raise OSError(errno, os.strerror(errno)) finally: if p2cread is not None and p2cwrite is not None: os.close(p2cread) if c2pwrite is not None and c2pread is not None: os.close(c2pwrite) if errwrite is not None and errread is not None: os.close(errwrite) self.pid = pid.value self._child_created = True klass._execute_child = _execute_child import subprocess _wrap_execute_child(subprocess.Popen) # vim: set et ts=4 sw=4 ai :