Re: Stats collection on Windows

On Wed, Apr 05, 2006 at 10:31:37AM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > TerminateProcess takes a HANDLE, not a process identifier.
> Yes. You get the handle by doing OpenProcess() with PROCESS_TERMINATE
> access.
> The functions used to enumerate processes all return the process id, not
> a HANDLE.(See Process32First/Process32Next). You use the HANDLE only
> when you need to *modify* something (for example, killing it).

Enumerating processes isn't a common operationg for programs other
than 'top'. :-) But even so, one can use OpenProcess() to evaluate
that the process being referenced is actually the one you think it
is, before calling TerminateProcess(), eliminating the race.

> > Yes, they provide the "kill" primitive, but only as a
> > compatibility measure.
> They do? Where is it? Certainly not in the documented SDK that I can
> see.

I believe it is called KillProcess().

> > A "good" Windows process, should
> > maintain a HANDLE to the process, and kill the process using
> > the HANDLE. This way, there is no race. The HANDLE is also
> > how you wait for the process to terminate normally.
> A "good" Windows process would be using threads ;-)

> That's what the Windows API was written for, and that's why anything
> that deals with multiple processes working together is a lot harder than
> on Unix.

Haha. Good point. :-)

Cheers,
mark

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