How to find a unix process in Python

Question

I would to find if the output of 'ps' command contain the process 'smtpd' The problem is that various busybox need different ps command! some need ' ps x ', other need ' ps w ' and other only the ' ps '

How i can make a universal algorithm that try all 'ps' possibilities ?

Example:

linex=''
foo=os.popen('ps')
for x in foo.readlines():
   if x.lower().find('smtpd') != -1:
     // SOME SCRIPT STUFF on linex string...
return linex

linex=''
foo=os.popen('ps w')
for x in foo.readlines():
   if x.lower().find('smtpd') != -1:
     // SOME SCRIPT STUFF on linex string...
return linex

linex=''
foo=os.popen('ps x')
for x in foo.readlines():
   if x.lower().find('smtpd') != -1:
     // SOME SCRIPT STUFF on linex string...
return linex

Answer 1

Check this:

Process list on Linux via Python

/proc is the right place for you to find what you want

import os

pids = [pid for pid in os.listdir('/proc') if pid.isdigit()]

for pid in pids:
    try:
        cmd = open(os.path.join('/proc', pid, 'cmdline'), 'rb').read()
        if cmd.find('smtpd') != -1:
            print "PID: %s; Command: %s" % (pid, cmd)
    # process has already terminated
    except IOError:
        continue