Python - How to pass global variable to multiprocessing.Process?

Question

I need to terminate some processes after a while, so I've used sleeping another process for the waiting. But the new process doesn't have access to global variables from the main process I guess. How could I solve it please?

Code:

import os
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
import time
import multiprocessing


log_file = open('stdout.log', 'a')
log_file.flush()

err_file = open('stderr.log', 'a')
err_file.flush()

processes = []


def processing():
    print "processing"
    global processes
    global log_file
    global err_file

    for i in range(0, 5):
        p = Popen(['java', '-jar', 'C:\\Users\\two\\Documents\\test.jar'], stdout=log_file, stderr=err_file) # something long running
        processes.append(p)
    print len(processes)    # returns 5

def waiting_service():
    name = multiprocessing.current_process().name
    print name, 'Starting'
    global processes
    print len(processes)    # returns 0

    time.sleep(2)

    for i in range(0, 5):
        processes[i].terminate()
    print name, 'Exiting'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    processing()

    service = multiprocessing.Process(name='waiting_service', target=waiting_service)

    service.start()

Answer 1

The whole problem was in Windows' Python. Python for Windows is blocking global variables to be seen in functions. I've switched to linux and my script works OK.

Special thanks to @rchang for his comment:

When I tested it, in both cases the print statement came up with 5. Perhaps we have a version mismatch in some way? I tested it with Python 2.7.6 on Linux kernel 3.13.0 (Mint distribution).