Thank you Nilamo, but as I said, I've verified that the parent process has terminated. A series of ps listings shows the parent process disappearing and the child continuing, now with init as its parent. Also, netstat shows the http connection remaining open. I don't want to .wait() or .communicate() with the Popen object - I just want to complete the xhttp request leaving the the child to run its course.
I thought the Popen close_fds parameter should have prevented the socket file descriptor being passed to the child, which should have caused it to be closed when the parent dies.
I thought the Popen close_fds parameter should have prevented the socket file descriptor being passed to the child, which should have caused it to be closed when the parent dies.