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Gambas Process Watcher (de-clutter)

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Posted November 11th 2024, 9:07 AM

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#1 (In Topic #1369)

Banned

Here is a little something i have made to help keep your hard drives clean of obsolete gambas temporary folders.

A little pre-text..

When you run a gambas program various process folders are (or can be) created related to the process ID. (Application.Handle)
So for example if you program runs and has the process ID of 2345 then the following happens…

linux creates a main process folder in /proc/
/proc/2345
gambas creates a temp folder (accessed in your application using the Temp() command)
/tmp/gambas.1000/2345
gambas JIT (if enabled) creates a temp folder.
/run/user/1000/gambas/2345
gtk3 may or not make a folder (depending on components used)
$HOME/.cache/org.gambas.2345
webkit may or may not make a folder.
$HOME/.local/share/org.gambas.2345

When your application closes all these folders should automatically delete as the application/libraries clean up.

There are however many things that can stop the cleanup !

If the program crashes.
If the program process is terminated "Killed"
The program will hard exit "kill" if the system shuts down or logs out while it's running.
Using Quit in your GUI program exit will quit the program before the libraries have cleaned up.

You can see if you have residual dead folders using the following commands that lists the directories and checks if an active PID exists in /proc/

Code

# gambas temp
for s in $(ls -t /tmp/gambas.1000|grep ^"[0-9]"); do PID=$\{s##*.}; echo -n "/tmp/gambas.1000/$s is "; [ -d "/proc/$PID" ] && echo "ok" || echo "dead" ; done
# xdg temp
for s in $(ls -t $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gambas|grep ^"[0-9]"); do PID=$\{s##*.}; echo -n "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gambas/$s is "; [ -d "/proc/$PID" ] && echo "ok" || echo "dead" ; done
# webkit temp
for s in $(ls -d ~/.local/share/org.gambas.*); do PID=$\{s##*.}; echo -n "$s is "; [ -d "/proc/$PID" ] && echo "alive" || echo "dead" ; done
# gtk temp
for s in $(ls -d ~/.cache/org.gambas.*); do PID=$\{s##*.}; echo -n "$s is "; [ -d "/proc/$PID" ] && echo "alive" || echo "dead" ; done

If you do a lot of developing you may well find a fair few folders there.
I had over 800 obsolete org.gambas.<pid> folders in ~/.cache.

Note:
The /tmp/gambas.1000 and /run/user/1000/gambas folders are not really an issue as they will both be cleared at each reboot.
but any folders left in the ~/ (home) directory will remain.

After me highlighting this issue of having many many dead folders to Benoit he has just made some changes to the interpreter/IDE debugger that do a better job of cleaning up, but there's not much he can do about program crashes/kills.

I have attempted to make a program that can monitor/manage these folders.

How it works…

it scans for temporary folders when launched and lists all with related PIDs.
It shows if the folders are obsolete or have a matching process in /proc/
It monitors the gambas temporary folder for new process folders.
when a process ends it checks if the temporary folders were cleaned up or not.
It can clean up for you.
It can kill and cleanup a running program.

It's initial intended use…
I made it so i could test run my other programs and see if any of them do not clean up after use.
For this use it is excellent. I have it running in the background and have caught a few cleanup problems with some programs of mine I was unaware of.

It's also handy for just clearing all old dead folders.

What to do if you find a program does not clean up after itself…
* Find out why it does not exit cleanly.
* Do NOT use Quit to exit it. If it will not exit without using quit you should really try to discover why and fix it.

* if you cannot fix it and feel using Quit is the only way then clean up yourself on program exit before using Quit

Code (`gambas`)

 Public Sub Form_Close()
 
  If Exist("~/.cache/org.gambas." & CStr(Application.ID)) Then Shell "rm -rf " & "~/.cache/org.gambas." & CStr(Application.ID) Wait
  If Exist("~/.local/share/org.gambas." & CStr(Application.ID)) Then Shell "rm -rf " & "~/.local/share/org.gambas." & CStr(Application.ID) Wait
 
' You can do the same for /tmp/gambas.1000/<pid> and /run/user/1000/gambas/<pid> but they delete on reboot anyway.
  ' /run/user/1000/gambas/<pid>
  If Exist(Env["XDG_RUNTIME_DIR"] &/ "gambas" &/ CStr(Application.ID)) Then Shell "rm -rf " & Env["XDG_RUNTIME_DIR"] &/ "gambas" &/ CStr(Application.ID) Wait
 ' /tmp/gambas.1000/<pid>
  If Exist(File.Dir(File.Dir(Temp())) &/ CStr(Application.ID)) Then Shell "rm -rf " & File.Dir(File.Dir(Temp())) &/ CStr(Application.ID) Wait
 
  ' Now we can use the dreaded Quit instruction that hard exits and stops the program cleaning up after itself.
  Quit
 
End
 
 

But that's not going to help with hard exits.
I myself have 3 hand written programs that launch when my system starts and are always running.
So every time i shutdown/reboot/logout the system hard kills these running programs so they do not cleanup.

If you also have this it may be an advantage to just add a simple gambas cleanup method to your programs.
Like this…

Code (`gambas`)

'' Silently delete ALL obsolete org.gambas.xxxx dirs from ~/.cache and ~/.local/share
'' Verbose prints details to stdout
'' ClearTemp also cleans obsolete dirs in /tmp/gambas.1000 and /run/user/1000/gambas
Public Sub DoGambasCleanUp(Optional Verbose As Boolean, ClearTemp As Boolean)
 
  Dim bHeader As Boolean
  Dim aLocations As String[] = [User.Home &/ ".cache", User.Home &/ ".local/share"]
 
  If ClearTemp Then aLocations.Insert([File.Dir(File.Dir(Temp())), Env["XDG_RUNTIME_DIR"] &/ "gambas"])
 
  For Each sLocation As String In aLocations
    For Each sDir As String In Dir(sLocation, If(sLocation Begins User.Home, "org.gambas.*", "[0-9][0-9]*"), gb.Directory)
      If Not Exist("/proc" &/ File.Ext("." & sDir)) Then
        If Not bHeader And If Verbose Then Print "Gambas housekeeping...."
        Shell "rm " & If(Verbose, "-vrf", "-rf") & " " & sLocation &/ sDir Wait
        bHeader = True
      Endif
    Next
  Next
 
End
 

This GambasProcWatch program can manage things and help you detect if one of your programs does not clean up.

It's very WIP at present. Suggestions welcome.

Known quirks..
I found gb.inotify to be unreliable with watching /proc/ folders for _Delete() event and had to use a Timer that checks for removed /proc/ folders. this makes it more cpu hungry than it should be but i couldn't work around it.

I have made it remember process commands that are launched while it is running but dead folders found at launch no longer have any command details (only possibly the icon so i make it load that for better identification)

New Version 2

Attachment

Old Version 1

Attachment

Enjoy

Last edit: November 7th 2025, 4:51 AM by BruceSteers

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Posted November 11th 2024, 10:49 AM

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