@AndrasDeak huh? why would that matter in killing the script...?

@ilkkachu originally there was no process associated with the script itself according to ps auwx. When running through bash I got an additional process named bash ./script_name. It seemed to make sense to me, but I could be wrong.

My understanding has to be incomplete, because I thought non-disowned child processes die when the parent does, which was not the case (I closed ssh where I ran the script but the script kept going)

@FaheemMitha avoid messing with system python as much as possible. Consider using a virtualenv and pip install everything (or at least pip install --user)

@ilkkachu I tend to flag non-trivial chat stuff on main to be able to see flag progress

@ilkkachu it does get deleted, see meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/349776/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/325008/… from our own terdon. We had a low-rep user complain that the resolution to his question from a year ago is now gone. I could help him by salvaging the transcript of the deleted room...

I'm done pinging :P

@AndrasDeak great. So the persistence of comments turns completely upside down when they're moved to chat. Turn from persistent until manually deleted into (might) get automatically deleted, but cannot be manually deleted. sheesh.

Can be manually deleted by a mod ;)

yes yes of course

@AndrasDeak I didn't touch Python 3. Just upgraded some Python 3 libraries.

@AndrasDeak I didn't follow this.

@AndrasDeak Having multiple versions of a library has its own problems. Unless you are suggesting replacing some Debian binary packages with pip installed packages.

@FaheemMitha the "good" news is that you can have only one version of a package per python env. If you have an active virtualenv you'll take packages from there. If you have --user installed packages those should shadow your system python packages. My point was that it's usually suggested to keep the packages you as a user want to use separately from what the system uses.

Otherwise things might happen (for instance you upgrading a package that system python depends on, inadvertently breaking something)

so it's good practice to only non-root pip install (NEVER sudo pip install!) packages, and best practice to do this with virtualenvs

@FaheemMitha as for this, imagine this script_name.sh: for k in $(seq 21); do echo "iteration $k"; sleep 3; done

if I make this executable and run ./script_name.sh, I don't see an associated process in ps that I can kill, only the spawned sleep processes one by one. If I kill one the next iteration continues.

Whereas running bash script_name.sh will put a bash process with this exact name in ps which I can find and kill, stopping the loop

@AndrasDeak Did you use a hashbang?

nope

otherwise I'd have added that in my MCVE

Possibly the hashbang would create a separate process. And it's good practice, anyway.

Per Stephen's description earlier, which you may have read.

waste of a perfectly good line ;)

@FaheemMitha I skimmed it, plan to read it properly later and read the linked Q&A

If it's a hashbang, then the execvp system call succeeds. Otherwise it doesn't.

@AndrasDeak Huh?

@FaheemMitha just joking

@AndrasDeak I plan things like that all the time. That's why my tabs grow out of control.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

@FaheemMitha yeah, my tab counter badge stopped working a while ago but I'm pretty sure I'm somewhere between 700 and 1000

Or maybe execv.

@AndrasDeak You've either got a lot of memory or efficient swap.

@FaheemMitha I've got a decent amount of memory and firefox

inactive tabs don't seem to take up resources

My approach is to periodically throw my tabs away. It's brutal but workable.

@FaheemMitha same, I've been planning the next decimation for a year at least

@FaheemMitha Hmm. My used memory keeps climbing, usually quite fast.

it takes hours, looking through them to keep what's still needed...

@AndrasDeak Quite.

most of them are just SO tabs that need delvotes

now my phone is the same... 75 tabs or so and at least half of those are just waiting for delvotes

@AndrasDeak You must read o lot of SO. Mine is just a whole lot of different stuff.

I look stuff up all the time, for example.

@FaheemMitha well that's my main site

even though I don't go out of my way to moderate it (considering these past few years) I still run into plenty of garbage

@AndrasDeak Oh.

@AndrasDeak Are you an SO mod?

Naaah, then I'd just delete all these

just a high-rep user who's also an owner of a larger room

If I find a URL that's particularly interesting, I save it to a relevant file. I have some notes.

But looking through the net generates enormous of traffic, far too much to keep track of.

OK, I've got 1019 tabs open on desktop...

Are hot days officially over for northern hemisphere?

@FaheemMitha I just tried and you were right, the shebang starts a new process for it

@AndrasDeak I think you'll find Stephen's answer explains what's going on. It's quite thorough.

yeah, I definitely will try not to forget to read it :)

@AndrasDeak That's quite a lot of tabs. How much RAM and swap do you have? And are you using Firefox?

$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15957        6671        4958        1042        4327        7912
Swap:         17165         194       16971

yes, firefox developer edition

@AndrasDeak That's exactly what RAM I have, 16 GB. You run Debian, right? What kernel?

$ uname -a
Linux latitude 5.7.0-2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.7.10-1 (2020-07-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux

@AndrasDeak That's really recent. Are you running testing or unstable, or are you using a custom kernel?

I've on buster here.

testing

I wonder if I should try a newer kernel. My memory management seems a little screwy.

@AndrasDeak Hmm.

bullseye, I think

Have you used testing for a long time?

@FaheemMitha yup

Many years

I've generally stuck with stable. Since 2001.

I had a kernel memory leak issue once, many years ago, got solved by an update

Basically the entire time I've used Debian.

@AndrasDeak Hmm. I'd have thought it was the browser, but hard to say. You're using Firefox, which is likely to be leaky too.

I mostly see RAM use building up when I browse imgur. Probably that infinite scrolling and lots of images even in comments. But that happens on a weekly time scale. I restart firefox when I'm running out of memory, but I only have to do that every few weeks.

@AndrasDeak Do you watch a lot of video? That's definitely part of the problem for me? I watch Amazon Prime Video and something called Hotstar, which is now owned by Disney.

Internal evidence suggests they both handle memory rather badly.

The change from need for breeze to need for sunlight is drastic

@AndrasDeak Can I take the liberty of pointing you to the "getting to know you" thread on Meta? Started by yours truly.

Isn't Yours Truly used at the end of a message?

@Tim Hmm?

@AndrasDeak When did you start using Debian?

How did you start with yours truly

@Tim I don't follow. "Yours truly" is just a way of saying "me".

With a flourish.

I still don't understand. My ignorance

@FaheemMitha mostly netflix and no issues there. I had issues with livefeeds eating memory but haven't watched watched any for a while

@FaheemMitha you can, but I'll politely decline from posting there ;)

@FaheemMitha don't really remember... the switch from ubuntu was smooth. 5+ years I think but unsure about details.

Last ubuntu LTS I had must have been Trusty Tahr, 2014. So 5 years is about right.

4 years

@AndrasDeak That's too bad. May I ask why?

@AndrasDeak Ok, so not that long then. What did you use before Ubuntu?

This is clearly a reference to something, but nothing comes to mind.

@FaheemMitha windows xp

@FaheemMitha multiple reasons. The main ones are that I've learned to think that SO/MSO is not a social network and I'm instinctively extending that to SE, and that I don't actually spend time on unix.SE so I'm not really the target audience of your question.

@FaheemMitha probably docker github.com/docker-library

(Look at the avatar, docker's current logo. Earlier versions were smiling, this is the trendy minimalist version)

@AndrasDeak Ugh. So how long have you been using Linux-based systems?

@AndrasDeak Well, you've been in the chat room on and off for a while now.

That makes you part of the community.

I'm not sure what "social network" means, and it makes me think of Facebook (ugh).

I definitely don't remember when I started :) I remember Jaunty 9.04 and vaguely remember Hardy Heron 8.04, so probably around 2008-2009 the latest.

@FaheemMitha exactly :P

I see that (surprisingly) you have no activity on U&L at all.

@AndrasDeak But this isn't a social network thing (whatever that means). It's about community. The original reason I wrote that question is so that regular site members could get to know each other a little better.

Presumably you've at least read the question.

@AndrasDeak I think you're right.

@AndrasDeak I started in 1998, as documented in my "getting to know you" answer.

@FaheemMitha thank you :) But apart from the few regulars here nobody knows who I am

(I thought I had sent the above message but no)

@FaheemMitha not surprising: I'm a noob and when I have a problem I google it and it's almost always solved

@FaheemMitha yup, I saw it

@AndrasDeak If you've been using Unix for 10 years or so, that's a fairly long time.

@FaheemMitha yup. But I'm still very much an end user.

@AndrasDeak So are most of the people here. Including many of the high rep ones.

so yeah, noob but not in the literal sense

Some of the high rep users are working with Unix systems professionally, but by no means all, or even most of them. It's a big mix.

I think we have quite a few people doing science-related stuff, for example. Like you.

But I bet most high-rep users have rough ideas about how OSes work, for instance. I know nothing.

I could answer some bash/regex questions, but I don't like bash or regex very much. They are useful tools for solving some problems but not entertaining for me.

I've seen many on-topic discussions here and they are all above my head

@AndrasDeak It's not really rocket science. I'm actually not particularly a Unix person (I have no particular fondness for classical Unix tools) but Unix is currently where the house where free software lives. Perhaps in part of historical reasons.

It's not rocket science, but I haven't been motivated to learn anything other than what I came across as an end user :)

A lot of things in the world are not too complicated yet I know nothing about them

Once upon a time I regarded Unix as quite glamorous (in the 1990s, for example), but I've largely got over it.

@AndrasDeak Fair enough.

It's modestly useful to know something about the internals of our contemporary Linux-based systems, because they are quite powerful and flexible. And they're more useful if you understand what makes them tick. And they're also quite accessible. And free, of course.