Is there a way to make sure a background process spawned by my program is killed when my process terminates?

Question

Basically the child process runs indefinitely until killed in the background, and I want to clean it up when my program terminates for any reason, i.e. via the Taskmanager.

Currently I have a while (Process.GetProcessesByName("ParentProcess").Count() > 0) loop and exit if the parent process isn't running, but it seems pretty brittle, and if I wanted it to work under debugger in Visual Studio I'd have to add "ParentProcess.vshost" or something.

Is there any way to make sure that the child process end without requiring the child process to know about the parent process? I'd prefer a solution in managed code, but if there isn't one I can PInvoke.

Edit: Passing the PID seems like a more robust solution, but for curiosity's sake, what if the child process was not my code but some exe that I have no control over? Is there a way to safeguard against possibly creating orphaned child processes?

Answer 1

If the child process is your own code, you could pass it the PID of the parent process when you launch it. The child process could then fetch the process with Process.GetProcessById and subscribe to its Exited event with a handler which shuts down the rest of the (child) process gracefully. Note that you need to set the EnableRaisingEvents property on the process to true.

Answer 2

The common term for such a child process in as orphan process. See the linked article for some possible solutions.

Answer 3

Pass the parent process id as command line parameter to child process.

In child process use get Process by id and subscribe to it's Exit event or create a thread and call to Process.WaitForExit

Answer 4

If the child process is not your own code you can use this code to find and kill all child processes:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace Util {
    public static class ProcessExtensions {
        public static void KillDescendants(this Process processToNotKillYet) {
            foreach (var eachProcess in Process.GetProcesses()) {
                if (eachProcess.ParentPid() == processToNotKillYet.Id) {
                    eachProcess.KillTree();
                }
            }
        }

        public static void KillTree(this Process processToKill) {
            processToKill.KillDescendants();
            processToKill.Kill();
        }

        public static PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION Info(this Process process) {
            var processInfo = new PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION();
            try {
                uint bytesWritten;
                NtQueryInformationProcess(process.Handle,
                                          0,
                                          ref processInfo,
                                          (uint)Marshal.SizeOf(processInfo),
                                          out bytesWritten); // == 0 is OK
            }
            catch (Win32Exception e) {
                if (!e.Message.Equals("Access is denied")) throw;
            }

            return processInfo;
        }

        public static int ParentPid(this Process process) {
            return process.Info().ParentPid;
        }

        [DllImport("ntdll.dll")]
        private static extern int NtQueryInformationProcess(
            IntPtr hProcess,
            int processInformationClass /* 0 */,
            ref PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION processBasicInformation,
            uint processInformationLength,
            out uint returnLength);

        [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
        public struct PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION {
            public int ExitStatus;
            public int PebBaseAddress;
            public int AffinityMask;
            public int BasePriority;
            public int Pid;
            public int ParentPid;
        }
    }
}

Answer 5

Here a the source code for a small utility app I built (it is based on Alan Hensel solution, which I found quite useful).

It is called ChildrenProcessKiller and it is a watcher that enables to kill all descendants process of a given parent process when the parent process exits (even if the parent process crashes)

Usage :

ChildrenProcessKiller.exe parentProcessId

Warning : this code is provided "as is", and it might kill small babies ;-)

ChildrenProcessKiller.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ChildrenProcessKiller
{
  static class ChildrenProcessKiller
  {
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Application.EnableVisualStyles();
      Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);

      string message = "This is a watcher that enables to kill all descendants process of a given parent process\n";
      message += "when the parent process exits (even if the parent process crashes) \n\n";
      message += "Usage : " + Application.ExecutablePath + " parentProcessId";

      if (args.Length != 1)
      {
        MessageBox.Show(message);
        System.Environment.Exit(1);
      }

      int parentProcessId;
      if (!Int32.TryParse(args[0], out parentProcessId))
      {
        MessageBox.Show(message);
        System.Environment.Exit(1);
      }

      try
      {
        mParentProcess = Process.GetProcessById(parentProcessId);
      }
      catch (System.ArgumentException ex)
      {
        //Parent process cannot be found!
        System.Environment.Exit(2);
      }
      Run();
    }

    private static List<Process> mChildrenProcesses;
    private static Process mParentProcess;

    private static void Run()
    {
      int thisProcessId = Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id;
      while ( ! mParentProcess.HasExited )
      {
        RefreshChildrenProcesses();
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
      }

      foreach (Process childProcess in mChildrenProcesses)
      {
        if ((!childProcess.HasExited) && (childProcess.Id != thisProcessId))
        {
          KillGracefullyThenViolently(childProcess);
        }
      }
    }

    private static void KillGracefullyThenViolently(Process process)
    {
      if (process.HasExited)
        return;

      try
      {
        process.CloseMainWindow();
      }
      catch (PlatformNotSupportedException)
      {}
      catch (InvalidOperationException)
      {}//do nothing : this app is meant to be "unstoppable", unless the parent process has exited

      for (int i = 0; i < 15; i++)
      {
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);
        if (process.HasExited)
          return;
      }

      try
      {
        process.Kill();
      }
      catch (System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception)
      {}
      catch(NotSupportedException)
      {}
      catch(InvalidOperationException)
      {} //same comment here
    }

    private static void RefreshChildrenProcesses()
    {
      if (mParentProcess.HasExited)
        return;
      List<Process> newChildren;
      try
      {
        newChildren = Utils.ProcessTree.GetProcessDescendants(mParentProcess);
        mChildrenProcesses = newChildren;
      }
      catch (System.Exception ex)
      {
        ; 
      }
    }


  }
}

ProcessTree.cs

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Utils
{
  public static class ProcessTree
  {

    public static List<Process> GetProcessDescendants(Process process)
    {
      List<Process> result = new List<Process>();
      foreach (Process eachProcess in Process.GetProcesses())
      {
        if (ParentPid(eachProcess) == process.Id)
        {
          result.Add(eachProcess);
        }
      }
      return result;
    }

    public static void KillDescendants(Process processToNotKillYet) 
    {
      foreach (Process eachProcess in Process.GetProcesses()) 
      {
        if (ParentPid(eachProcess) == processToNotKillYet.Id) 
        {
          if (eachProcess.Id != Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id)
            KillTree(eachProcess);
        }
      }
    }

    public static void KillTree(Process processToKill) 
    {
      KillDescendants(processToKill);
      processToKill.Kill();
    }

    public static PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION Info(Process process) 
    {
      PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION processInfo = new PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION();
      try
      {
        uint bytesWritten;
        NtQueryInformationProcess(process.Handle,
                        0,
                        ref processInfo,
                        (uint)Marshal.SizeOf(processInfo),
                        out bytesWritten); // == 0 is OK
      }
      catch (Win32Exception e) 
      {
        if (!e.Message.Equals("Access is denied")) throw;
      }

      return processInfo;
    }

    public static int ParentPid(Process process) 
    {
      return Info(process).ParentPid;
    }

    [DllImport("ntdll.dll")]
    private static extern int NtQueryInformationProcess(
      IntPtr hProcess,
      int processInformationClass /* 0 */,
      ref PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION processBasicInformation,
      uint processInformationLength,
      out uint returnLength);

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    public struct PROCESS_BASIC_INFORMATION 
    {
      public int ExitStatus;
      public int PebBaseAddress;
      public int AffinityMask;
      public int BasePriority;
      public int Pid;
      public int ParentPid;
    }
  }
}