Process list on Linux via Python

How can I get running process list using Python on Linux?

Solution 1:

IMO looking at the /proc filesystem is less nasty than hacking the text output of ps.

import os
pids = [pid for pid in os.listdir('/proc') if pid.isdigit()]

for pid in pids:
    try:
        print open(os.path.join('/proc', pid, 'cmdline'), 'rb').read().split('\0')
    except IOError: # proc has already terminated
        continue

Solution 2:

You could use psutil as a platform independent solution!

import psutil
psutil.pids()

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 46, 48, 50, 51, 178, 182, 222, 223, 224,
268, 1215, 1216, 1220, 1221, 1243, 1244, 1301, 1601, 2237, 2355,
2637, 2774, 3932, 4176, 4177, 4185, 4187, 4189, 4225, 4243, 4245, 
4263, 4282, 4306, 4311, 4312, 4313, 4314, 4337, 4339, 4357, 4358, 
4363, 4383, 4395, 4408, 4433, 4443, 4445, 4446, 5167, 5234, 5235, 
5252, 5318, 5424, 5644, 6987, 7054, 7055, 7071]

Solution 3:

You can use a third party library, such as PSI:

PSI is a Python package providing real-time access to processes and other miscellaneous system information such as architecture, boottime and filesystems. It has a pythonic API which is consistent accross all supported platforms but also exposes platform-specific details where desirable.

Solution 4:

The sanctioned way of creating and using child processes is through the subprocess module.

import subprocess
pl = subprocess.Popen(['ps', '-U', '0'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
print pl

The command is broken down into a python list of arguments so that it does not need to be run in a shell (By default the subprocess.Popen does not use any kind of a shell environment it just execs it). Because of this we cant simply supply 'ps -U 0' to Popen.