How to make a Python script run like a service or daemon in Linux

Question

You have two options here.

1. Make a proper cron job that calls your script. Cron is a common name for a GNU/Linux daemon that periodically launches scripts according to a schedule you set. You add your script into a crontab or place a symlink to it into a special directory and the daemon handles the job of launching it in the background. You can read more at Wikipedia. There is a variety of different cron daemons, but your GNU/Linux system should have it already installed.

2. Use some kind of python approach (a library, for example) for your script to be able to daemonize itself. Yes, it will require a simple event loop (where your events are timer triggering, possibly, provided by sleep function).

I wouldn't recommend you to choose 2., because you would be, in fact, repeating cron functionality. The Linux system paradigm is to let multiple simple tools interact and solve your problems. Unless there are additional reasons why you should make a daemon (in addition to trigger periodically), choose the other approach.

Also, if you use daemonize with a loop and a crash happens, no one will check the mail after that (as pointed out by Ivan Nevostruev in comments to this answer). While if the script is added as a cron job, it will just trigger again.

Here's a nice class that is taken from here:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, os, time, atexit
from signal import SIGTERM

class Daemon:
        """
        A generic daemon class.

        Usage: subclass the Daemon class and override the run() method
        """
        def __init__(self, pidfile, stdin='/dev/null', stdout='/dev/null', stderr='/dev/null'):
                self.stdin = stdin
                self.stdout = stdout
                self.stderr = stderr
                self.pidfile = pidfile

        def daemonize(self):
                """
                do the UNIX double-fork magic, see Stevens' "Advanced
                Programming in the UNIX Environment" for details (ISBN 0201563177)
                http://www.erlenstar.demon.co.uk/unix/faq_2.html#SEC16
                """
                try:
                        pid = os.fork()
                        if pid > 0:
                                # exit first parent
                                sys.exit(0)
                except OSError, e:
                        sys.stderr.write("fork #1 failed: %d (%s)\n" % (e.errno, e.strerror))
                        sys.exit(1)

                # decouple from parent environment
                os.chdir("/")
                os.setsid()
                os.umask(0)

                # do second fork
                try:
                        pid = os.fork()
                        if pid > 0:
                                # exit from second parent
                                sys.exit(0)
                except OSError, e:
                        sys.stderr.write("fork #2 failed: %d (%s)\n" % (e.errno, e.strerror))
                        sys.exit(1)

                # redirect standard file descriptors
                sys.stdout.flush()
                sys.stderr.flush()
                si = file(self.stdin, 'r')
                so = file(self.stdout, 'a+')
                se = file(self.stderr, 'a+', 0)
                os.dup2(si.fileno(), sys.stdin.fileno())
                os.dup2(so.fileno(), sys.stdout.fileno())
                os.dup2(se.fileno(), sys.stderr.fileno())

                # write pidfile
                atexit.register(self.delpid)
                pid = str(os.getpid())
                file(self.pidfile,'w+').write("%s\n" % pid)

        def delpid(self):
                os.remove(self.pidfile)

        def start(self):
                """
                Start the daemon
                """
                # Check for a pidfile to see if the daemon already runs
                try:
                        pf = file(self.pidfile,'r')
                        pid = int(pf.read().strip())
                        pf.close()
                except IOError:
                        pid = None

                if pid:
                        message = "pidfile %s already exist. Daemon already running?\n"
                        sys.stderr.write(message % self.pidfile)
                        sys.exit(1)

                # Start the daemon
                self.daemonize()
                self.run()

        def stop(self):
                """
                Stop the daemon
                """
                # Get the pid from the pidfile
                try:
                        pf = file(self.pidfile,'r')
                        pid = int(pf.read().strip())
                        pf.close()
                except IOError:
                        pid = None

                if not pid:
                        message = "pidfile %s does not exist. Daemon not running?\n"
                        sys.stderr.write(message % self.pidfile)
                        return # not an error in a restart

                # Try killing the daemon process       
                try:
                        while 1:
                                os.kill(pid, SIGTERM)
                                time.sleep(0.1)
                except OSError, err:
                        err = str(err)
                        if err.find("No such process") > 0:
                                if os.path.exists(self.pidfile):
                                        os.remove(self.pidfile)
                        else:
                                print str(err)
                                sys.exit(1)

        def restart(self):
                """
                Restart the daemon
                """
                self.stop()
                self.start()

        def run(self):
                """
                You should override this method when you subclass Daemon. It will be called after the process has been
                daemonized by start() or restart().
                """

You should use the python-daemon library, it takes care of everything.

From PyPI: Library to implement a well-behaved Unix daemon process.

You can use fork() to detach your script from the tty and have it continue to run, like so:

import os, sys
fpid = os.fork()
if fpid!=0:
  # Running as daemon now. PID is fpid
  sys.exit(0)

Of course you also need to implement an endless loop, like

while 1:
  do_your_check()
  sleep(5)

Hope this get's you started.

Assuming that you would really want your loop to run 24/7 as a background service

For a solution that doesn't involve injecting your code with libraries, you can simply create a service template, since you are using linux:

[Unit]
Description = <Your service description here>
After = network.target # Assuming you want to start after network interfaces are made available
 
[Service]
Type = simple
ExecStart = python <Path of the script you want to run>
User = # User to run the script as
Group = # Group to run the script as
Restart = on-failure # Restart when there are errors
SyslogIdentifier = <Name of logs for the service>
RestartSec = 5
TimeoutStartSec = infinity
 
[Install]
WantedBy = multi-user.target # Make it accessible to other users

Place that file in your daemon service folder (usually /etc/systemd/system/), in a *.service file, and install it using the following systemctl commands (will likely require sudo privileges):

systemctl enable <service file name without .service extension>

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl start <service file name without .service extension>

You can then check that your service is running by using the command:

systemctl | grep running

You can also make the python script run as a service using a shell script. First create a shell script to run the python script like this (scriptname arbitary name)

#!/bin/sh
script='/home/.. full path to script'
/usr/bin/python $script &

now make a file in /etc/init.d/scriptname

#! /bin/sh

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin
DAEMON=/home/.. path to shell script scriptname created to run python script
PIDFILE=/var/run/scriptname.pid

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

case "$1" in
  start)
     log_daemon_msg "Starting feedparser"
     start_daemon -p $PIDFILE $DAEMON
     log_end_msg $?
   ;;
  stop)
     log_daemon_msg "Stopping feedparser"
     killproc -p $PIDFILE $DAEMON
     PID=`ps x |grep feed | head -1 | awk '{print $1}'`
     kill -9 $PID       
     log_end_msg $?
   ;;
  force-reload|restart)
     $0 stop
     $0 start
   ;;
  status)
     status_of_proc -p $PIDFILE $DAEMON atd && exit 0 || exit $?
   ;;
 *)
   echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/atd {start|stop|restart|force-reload|status}"
   exit 1
  ;;
esac

exit 0

Now you can start and stop your python script using the command /etc/init.d/scriptname start or stop.