From a Python program, I start xfce4-terminal as a subprocess. When calling .terminate(), xfce4-terminal is still there. Not nice. So I tried to kill it more abruptly - surprisingly, the corresponding process with corresponding PID is not there anymore... Some ancient and dangerous black magic is happening there (?). See by yourself: >>> import subprocess >>> proc=subprocess.Popen(["xfce4-terminal"]) >>> #you should see the terminal is started... >>> proc.terminate() >>> #it is still there, alive and kicking... >>> import os >>> os.kill(proc.pid, 9) #let's try something more radical (SIGKILL) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> ProcessLookupError: [Errno 3] No such process >>> # WTF??? I was curious of this behaviour so I reproduced the issue in bash, it has nothing to do with Python's subprocess of course: (base) [matias@kashyyyk bec]$ xfce4-terminal & [1] 167148 (base) [matias@kashyyyk bec]$ kill 167148 bash: kill: (167148) - No such process (the terminal is still there) I am really puzzled. What's going on? Continue reading...
