As a simplified example, I would like to:

• start a shell command
• wait some time
• stop it

The problem is that a child subprocesses from the shell won't terminate on cancel and would keep running even after python process is finished.

The problem is present only when a command consists of several processes, like ping localhost | cat, but not when a command is simple, like sleep 20.

Tested with: ubuntu-24.04, python 3.12.8, trio 0.29.0

Steps to reproduce:

• check for currently running ping processes: ps aux | grep ping (confirm no ping process is running)
• run the test script (see below) python ./test.py
• check list of processes again, while the test script is running and after the test script terminates

Expected result is that a shell + ping + cat are all running only for 5 seconds.

Actual result that a shell process is running for 5 seconds, but the ping and also cat processes remain running not just beyond 5 seconds, but even after a script terminates. It looks like the subprocesses get detached from the shell and are not considered childs any more. I am not sure if this is 1 or 2 separate problems. I am not even sure if this is a proper way to run a shell script from within trio.

In any case, is there a workaround or a better way to run shell commands?

test.py script:

import trio
from subprocess import DEVNULL

# cmd = 'sleep 20'  # this is properly stopped
cmd = 'ping localhost | cat'  # this command won't stop properly

async def test():
    async with trio.open_nursery() as ns:
        async def service_runner(task_status = trio.TASK_STATUS_IGNORED):
            with trio.CancelScope() as scope:
                task_status.started(scope)
                await trio.run_process(cmd, shell=True, check=False,
                                        stdout=DEVNULL, stderr=DEVNULL)
                ns.cancel_scope.cancel()

        service_scope = await ns.start(service_runner)
        await trio.sleep(5.0)
        service_scope.cancel()
        await trio.sleep(5.0)

trio.run(test)