RuntimeError on windows trying python multiprocessing

Michael Zippo

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I am trying my very first formal python program using Threading and Multiprocessing on a windows machine. I am unable to launch the processes though, with python giving the following message. The thing is, I am not launching my threads in the main module. The threads are handled in a separate module inside a class.

EDIT: By the way this code runs fine on ubuntu. Not quite on windows

RuntimeError: 
            Attempt to start a new process before the current process
            has finished its bootstrapping phase.
            This probably means that you are on Windows and you have
            forgotten to use the proper idiom in the main module:
                if __name__ == "__main__":
                    freeze_support()
                    ...
            The "freeze_support()" line can be omitted if the program
            is not going to be frozen to produce a Windows executable.

My original code is pretty long, but I was able to reproduce the error in an abridged version of the code. It is split in two files, the first is the main module and does very little other than import the module which handles processes/threads and calls a method. The second module is where the meat of the code is.

testMain.py:

import parallelTestModule

extractor = parallelTestModule.ParallelExtractor()
extractor.runInParallel(numProcesses=2, numThreads=4)

parallelTestModule.py:

import multiprocessing
from multiprocessing import Process
import threading

class ThreadRunner(threading.Thread):
    """ This class represents a single instance of a running thread"""
    def __init__(self, name):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.name = name
    def run(self):
        print self.name,"
"

class ProcessRunner:
    """ This class represents a single instance of a running process """
    def runp(self, pid, numThreads):
        mythreads = []
        for tid in range(numThreads):
            name = "Proc-"+str(pid)+"-Thread-"+str(tid)
            th = ThreadRunner(name)
            mythreads.append(th) 
        for i in mythreads:
            i.start()
        for i in mythreads:
            i.join()

class ParallelExtractor:    
    def runInParallel(self, numProcesses, numThreads):
        myprocs = []
        prunner = ProcessRunner()
        for pid in range(numProcesses):
            pr = Process(target=prunner.runp, args=(pid, numThreads)) 
            myprocs.append(pr) 
#        if __name__ == "parallelTestModule":    #This didnt work
#        if __name__ == "__main__":              #This obviously doesnt work
#        multiprocessing.freeze_support()        #added after seeing error to no avail
        for i in myprocs:
            i.start()

        for i in myprocs:
            i.join()

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Ken Williams

Prague | 2023-03-21

Maybe there are another answers? What RuntimeError on windows trying python multiprocessing exactly means?. Checked yesterday, it works!

Angelo Wu

Munchen | 2023-03-21

I was preparing for my coding interview, thanks for clarifying this - RuntimeError on windows trying python multiprocessing in Python is not the simplest one. Will use it in my bachelor thesis

Jan Sikorski

Warsaw | 2023-03-21

Thanks for explaining! I was stuck with RuntimeError on windows trying python multiprocessing for some hours, finally got it done 🤗. Will use it in my bachelor thesis