exiftool perl process keeps running after a critical error in the python process (SEGFAULT or kill -9)

[garz75]

Describe the bug

When the main exiftool python process is killed abruptly (SEGFAULT or kill -9), the perl process started for exiftool keeps running (see screenshots). I am not sure if it is an exiftool bug or an osxphotos bug: when the osxphotos process is killed, the perl process should receive a signal (SIGPIPE, if I remember my college Unix courses correctly), and exit by itself...

To Reproduce

1. Run osxphotos export with the --exiftool argument (see below the full command line used if needed)
2. kill -9 {osxphotos pid}
3. a ps shows a perl process still running (see screenshot)

Expected behavior

The perl process should exit or be killed

Screenshots

Command line used:

$ osxphotos export osxphotos --retry 3 --update --report export_all_report-`date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S`.json \
   --cleanup --query-eval "list(filter(re.compile(r'^(19|20)').match, [item for sublist in [a.folder_names for a in photo.album_info] for item in sublist]))"  \
   --convert-to-jpeg --jpeg-quality 0.95 --directory "{folder_album,NoAlbum}"  --person-keyword --keyword-template "{label}" \
   --skip-original-if-edited --exiftool --filename "{created.strftime,%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S}-{exiftool:EXIF:SubSecTimeOriginal,000}" \
   --jpeg-ext jpg --description-template "{descr}{detected_text? - {detected_text},}" --timestamp -V -V

Lingering perl processes after 3 SEGFAULTS and one kill -9:

$ ps auxw | grep perl
fgarzon          82103   0.1  0.0 411755632    992 s000  S    Sun07PM  14:53.28 /usr/bin/perl5.30 -w /opt/homebrew/bin/exiftool -stay_open True -api largefilesupport=1 -@ - -common_args -n -P -G -E
fgarzon          84911   0.1  0.0 411780896    976 s000  S    Sun09PM  12:28.47 /usr/bin/perl5.30 -w /opt/homebrew/bin/exiftool -stay_open True -api largefilesupport=1 -@ - -common_args -n -P -G -E
fgarzon          42827   0.1  0.8 411899840 131040 s000  S    10:09PM   6:57.88 /usr/bin/perl5.34 -w /opt/homebrew/bin/exiftool -stay_open True -api largefilesupport=1 -@ - -common_args -n -P -G -E
fgarzon          79241   0.1  0.0 411771136    992 s000  S    Sun06PM  14:10.09 /usr/bin/perl5.30 -w /opt/homebrew/bin/exiftool -stay_open True -api largefilesupport=1 -@ - -common_args -n -P -G -E
fgarzon          43708   0.0  0.0 410592976   1328 s003  S+   10:31PM   0:00.00 grep perl

Note: The segfaults I mention were due to a faulty python installation, it is not a bug in osxphotos. Upgrading python with homebrew fixed the issue....

Desktop (please complete the following information):

osxphotos --version
osxphotos, version 0.68.2
Python 3.12.4 (main, Jun  6 2024, 18:26:44) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.3.9.4)]
macOS 14.5.0, arm64

[RhetTbull]

I'm not sure if this is something I can fix but will take a look at the python subprocess module to see if I'm missing something. When exiftool is first called, a persistent exiftool process is started in a subprocess and the osxphotos python code then communicates with this process to run the exiftool commands. This prevents having to start a new exiftool process for every photo. There is tear-down code that will kill any lingering exiftool processes at shutdown but of course, this doesn't get called if you kill the python process or it segfaults.

[RhetTbull]

@all-contributors please add @garz75 for bug

[allcontributors]

@RhetTbull

I've put up a pull request to add @garz75! 🎉