Close console while process is running

Question

I'm writing a small application that uses an "index-file" to open folders in explorer from just a few button presses. Anyway I would like to update that index file in a "background process" every time the applications shuts down. Updating the index file means scanning through our network and for some remote users it could take a few minutes. That's why I would like it to hide the console during the scanning process in order to avoid the process being aborted by user.

I tried several things similar to:

#these are just dummy lines
path = get_user_input()
subprocess.Popen(r'explorer "%s"' % path)
#Here I start my update process
multiprocessing.Process(target=update_index).start()
#end of script, now I want that process to continue until finished while main console closes. I only seem to get one or the other.

I also tried using:

DETACHED_PROCESS = 0x00000008
CREATE_NO_WINDOW = 0x08000000
subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, stdin=None, stdout=None, 
                 stderr=None, 
                 creationflags=DETACHED_PROCESS|CREATE_NO_WINDOW)

and managed to get a separate console window but still no way from preventing the user for closing down the process.

Also keep in mind I would like to distribute this script with something like py2exe later to make it accessible for those without python so I guess using pythonw.exe is out of question. or?

Answer 1

That's not really the answer you're looking for, but you could redesign your system architecture: Write your index updater as a server process that's communicating with your actual application over sockets. Then you just have the index updater server process run continuously (maybe even on another machine) and have the index updater process do all the time-consuming work.

Answer 2

If you just want to perform background tasks that happen at certain intervals, then use cron. If you want to run a command in the background and keep it running even if you logout of the console, use nohup.