How to move SimpleSocket server into a background process

Question

I have a simple socketServer that works perfectly on the main thread.

#Server PORT
PORT = 8020
#reassign variables
Handler = Server #this is a SimpleHTTPHandler

httpd = SocketServer.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)

httpd.serve_forever()

I need to have this run in the background and have the ability to stop the process at will. What is the proper way to do this?

EDIT

Sorry I was unclear. I need to have the server running non stop and I can only access the system from SSH so I can't just start it and walk away.

Answer 1

Assuming you are running your script on a POSIX operating system and your script is named socket_server.py, you can use nohup like this:

$ nohup python socket_server.py >> /dev/null 2>&1 &

That will put your script in the background, make it immune to hangups, and you can exit your SSH session. The shell will print out the job number and PID:

$ [1] 1234

You can stop it later by getting sending a SIGTERM using kill:

$ kill -SIGTERM 1234

Answer 2

You might need threading/_thread

def server():
    ....

import _thread
_thread.start_new_thread(server, ())

This basically starts the server function on a different thread.

EDIT: In this case in your def server(): you a global variable threadIsRunning, if this is valued to True it should continue, but if it is valued to False run thread.exit() this should all be in some sort of loop.