Phantom python processes left when Calibre closes

tfarrell · 07-28-2009, 05:01 PM

I recently had occasion to look in my process list in the Activity Monitor app on my iMac, and found that there were over a dozen python processes listed, which was odd because I did not at the moment have any python applications running. (The only things running were Safari and Mail.) This was a few days ago, and I figured I should do a little testing before posting about it. Plus, I got the 0.6.2 upgrade yesterday, and I wasn't sure if the problem remained.

Today I had a moment to experiment. I opened Calibre, watched a bunch of python processes show up, closed Calibre, and watched them disappear. So far so good. I re-opened Calibre, saw the same smallish number of python processes show up, added twelve books, watched a huge swath of python processes appear, waited for it to finish adding, did a bulk change meta information on the books I just added, closed calibre... and four python processes remained.

These processes appear to be zombies, they're using zero CPU, but they are using 17.89 MB of system memory each. With only four of them that's not a big deal, but if I've been using Calibre for a while and there are well over a dozen, it starts to add up.

I am using Calibre 0.6.2 and the latest MacOS X with all updates installed, on an iMac G5.

kovidgoyal · 07-28-2009, 05:39 PM

Hmm sounds like the processes used for conversion are not exiting. Can you open a bug report and I'll look at it in a bit.

itimpi · 07-28-2009, 05:49 PM

Sounds as if it might be related to the issue on Windows where I sometimes seem to have 7 or 8 calibre-parallel processes running rather than the 3 that is the norm on my system. However in this case they do die when the main calibre process dies.

tfarrell · 07-29-2009, 11:40 PM

Kovid, your fix for this bug seems to work great. Thank you!

kovidgoyal · 07-29-2009, 11:49 PM

Cool and it has the side-effect of reducing calibre's memory footprint as well

07-28-2009, 05:01 PM	#1
tfarrell Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2009 Device: kindle 2	Phantom python processes left when Calibre closes I recently had occasion to look in my process list in the Activity Monitor app on my iMac, and found that there were over a dozen python processes listed, which was odd because I did not at the moment have any python applications running. (The only things running were Safari and Mail.) This was a few days ago, and I figured I should do a little testing before posting about it. Plus, I got the 0.6.2 upgrade yesterday, and I wasn't sure if the problem remained. Today I had a moment to experiment. I opened Calibre, watched a bunch of python processes show up, closed Calibre, and watched them disappear. So far so good. I re-opened Calibre, saw the same smallish number of python processes show up, added twelve books, watched a huge swath of python processes appear, waited for it to finish adding, did a bulk change meta information on the books I just added, closed calibre... and four python processes remained. These processes appear to be zombies, they're using zero CPU, but they are using 17.89 MB of system memory each. With only four of them that's not a big deal, but if I've been using Calibre for a while and there are well over a dozen, it starts to add up. I am using Calibre 0.6.2 and the latest MacOS X with all updates installed, on an iMac G5.

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07-28-2009, 05:39 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,863 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Hmm sounds like the processes used for conversion are not exiting. Can you open a bug report and I'll look at it in a bit.

07-28-2009, 05:49 PM	#3
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	Sounds as if it might be related to the issue on Windows where I sometimes seem to have 7 or 8 calibre-parallel processes running rather than the 3 that is the norm on my system. However in this case they do die when the main calibre process dies.

07-29-2009, 11:40 PM	#4
tfarrell Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2009 Device: kindle 2	Kovid, your fix for this bug seems to work great. Thank you!

07-29-2009, 11:49 PM	#5
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,863 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Cool and it has the side-effect of reducing calibre's memory footprint as well

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