how to kill (or avoid) zombie processes with subprocess module

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A zombie process is not a real process; it’s just a remaining entry in the process table until the parent process requests the child’s return code. The actual process has ended and requires no other resources but said process table entry.

We probably need more information about the processes you run in order to actually help more.

However, in the case that your Python program knows when the child processes have ended (e.g. by reaching the end of the child stdout data), then you can safely call process.wait():

import subprocess

process= subprocess.Popen( ('ls', '-l', '/tmp'), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

for line in process.stdout:
        pass

subprocess.call( ('ps', '-l') )
process.wait()
print "after wait"
subprocess.call( ('ps', '-l') )

Example output:

$ python so2760652.py
F S   UID   PID  PPID  C PRI  NI ADDR SZ WCHAN  TTY          TIME CMD
0 S   501 21328 21326  0  80   0 -  1574 wait   pts/2    00:00:00 bash
0 S   501 21516 21328  0  80   0 -  1434 wait   pts/2    00:00:00 python
0 Z   501 21517 21516  0  80   0 -     0 exit   pts/2    00:00:00 ls <defunct>
0 R   501 21518 21516  0  80   0 -   608 -      pts/2    00:00:00 ps
after wait
F S   UID   PID  PPID  C PRI  NI ADDR SZ WCHAN  TTY          TIME CMD
0 S   501 21328 21326  0  80   0 -  1574 wait   pts/2    00:00:00 bash
0 S   501 21516 21328  0  80   0 -  1467 wait   pts/2    00:00:00 python
0 R   501 21519 21516  0  80   0 -   608 -      pts/2    00:00:00 ps

Otherwise, you can keep all the children in a list, and now and then .poll for their return codes. After every iteration, remember to remove from the list the children with return codes different than None (i.e. the finished ones).

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