_venv_launcher_ancestors() ran after
_wait_for_windows_update_gateway_exit(), but the drain stops tracking a
PID exactly when it dies - for the common graceful-drain case the worker
is gone by the time the wait returns, and a dead pid's parent cannot be
recovered, so the launcher stop never fired on that path. Resolve
launcher ancestors before draining and stop the snapshot afterwards
alongside the survivors; a launcher that already exited with its worker
raises ProcessLookupError at the kill and is skipped.
The set-cover invariant test now marks drained workers uninspectable
(construction raises, like psutil.NoSuchProcess), so a post-drain
launcher lookup can never reappear unnoticed.
The pause stops every gateway its discovery maps, but the venv-holder
guard sees the process table as it is now: a gateway respawned by its
supervisor (Scheduled Task, login watchdog) inside the pause-to-guard
window, or one started through a spawn path discovery does not map,
still holds venv .pyds - and the guard dead-ended the update on exactly
the kind of process the pause machinery exists to stop.
When every remaining holder classifies as a pausable gateway - using the
same _is_pausable_gateway matcher the Desktop preflight uses, so the two
views cannot drift - stop them and re-scan once. Any non-gateway holder
(REPL, stray script, Desktop backend) keeps the hard refusal exactly as
before, and a survivor after the stop still aborts.
On Windows a gateway started through the venv shim is a two-process chain:
venv\Scripts\python.exe (launcher — keeps venv .pyd files mapped)
└─ uv\python\...\python.exe (worker — writes the gateway PID file)
`_pause_windows_gateways_for_update()` builds its pause set from
`find_gateway_pids()`, which reads the PID file and therefore only ever
sees the *worker*. The venv-holder guard immediately downstream
(`_detect_venv_python_processes()`) matches on the venv path prefix, so it
only ever sees the *launcher*.
The two sets are disjoint. A gateway the updater had just gracefully
drained still left its launcher alive, the guard reported that launcher as
a venv holder, and the update aborted — every time. On the Desktop path
this surfaces as the dead-end dialog:
[updates] venv-blocked: 2 process(es) hold the install
PID ... python.exe ...\venv\Scripts\python.exe -m hermes_cli.main gateway run --replace
Note the reported holder is a gateway the updater believes it stopped.
The Desktop path is affected because `hermes-setup.exe` runs
`hermes update --yes --gateway --force`, and `--force` deliberately does
NOT bypass the venv guard (that needs `--force-venv`), so the abort is
correct behaviour reacting to an incomplete pause.
Fix: after the graceful drain, walk one hop up from each mapped gateway
PID and force-kill parents that live under the project venv.
Deliberately additive, not a substitution:
- The planned-stop marker and the graceful drain still target the worker
(the PID that wrote the PID file), so clean shutdown is unchanged and
updates don't get pushed onto the hard-kill path.
- `terminate_pid(force=True)` is `taskkill /T` (tree kill), so killing a
launcher that outlived its worker also reaps stragglers.
- `_resume_windows_gateways_after_update()` needs no change: the mapped
respawn argv is rebuilt from the profile name
(`_gateway_run_args_for_profile`), never from the killed PID, and the
restart watcher's `_pid_exists()` wait still terminates because the
tree kill takes the whole chain down.
- Only the venv-side parent is returned. Unrelated ancestors (a Scheduled
Task's `cmd.exe`, an operator's shell) are ignored, and the caller's own
process chain is excluded so a CLI `hermes update` never nominates
itself.
Tests assert the invariant the two PID-resolution paths must satisfy —
the pause's kill set must cover the guard's abort set — rather than
snapshotting PIDs. Verified to fail without the fix:
AssertionError: pause stopped [] but the venv guard aborts on [400]
— disjoint sets abort the update
Second, deeper pass over tools/gateway/hermes_cli plus first pass over
the trees wave 1 missed (acp, acp_adapter, skills, computer_use, docker,
dashboard, conformance, monitoring, secret_sources, hermes_state,
providers). Same rubric as wave 1 (AGENTS.md test policy); security,
alternation/caching invariants, issue-number regressions, and E2E kept.
Real test-quality fixes found and rooted out along the way:
- tests/tools/test_command_guards.py made real auxiliary-LLM HTTPS calls
(DEFAULT_CONFIG smart-approval leaked in) — pinned approval
mode=manual via autouse fixture: 17.4s → 0.4s.
- test_model_switch_custom_providers.py / test_user_providers_model_switch.py
silently probed live provider catalogs (~2s/test) — stubbed
cached_provider_model_ids/provider_model_ids/fetch_api_models.
- test_telegram_noise_filter.py: 15-platform copy-paste matrix over
shared gateway.run logic → 3 representative platforms (55s → 3.9s).
- test_gateway_shutdown.py: stop()'s 5s interrupt-deadline loop spun on
MagicMock agents — interrupt.side_effect now clears _running_agents
(22s → 1.0s).
- test_gateway_inactivity_timeout.py poll-harness timings shrunk 3-5x
(24s → 1.1s); test_mcp_stability.py backoff/SIGTERM-grace sleeps
patched (15.4s → 2.5s); test_async_delegation.py negative-drain wait
5s → 0.5s.
- test_telegram_init_deadline.py: loop-block margin restored to 1.0s
with rationale comment — the watchdog-dump assertion needs the loop
blocked well past deadline+grace under parallel load (flaked once in
the 40-worker verification run at a 0.2s margin).
Verification: full hermetic suite via scripts/run_tests.sh —
2,438 files, 21,718 tests passed, 0 failed, 293.9s wall.
Suite totals vs original baseline: 46,820 → 19,757 test functions
(−57.8%), wall 583.5s → 293.9s (−50%), subprocess CPU 13,564s → 11,623s.
The post-update gateway resume path (`_resume_windows_gateways_after_update`)
only relaunched gateways that were *running* when the update began — it
enumerates live PIDs in `_pause_windows_gateways_for_update` and respawns
exactly those. A gateway that had already died between updates (e.g. it was
launched attached to a terminal/TUI that later closed, taking the child with
it) was never brought back: the Startup-folder / Scheduled-Task autostart
entry only fires on the next login, not after an in-place update.
So a Desktop-GUI update (which runs `hermes update --yes --gateway`) on a box
whose gateway had quietly died would complete with no gateway running, and the
user had no indication anything should have come up.
Fix: when no gateway is running at pause time but an autostart entry is
installed (`gateway_windows.is_installed()` — an explicit "I want a gateway"
signal), return a `cold_start_if_installed` token. The resume step then does a
fresh detached spawn via `gateway_windows._spawn_detached()` — the same
windowless `pythonw` + `CREATE_BREAKAWAY_FROM_JOB` path `hermes gateway start`
uses. It re-checks liveness immediately before spawning so a concurrent start
(autostart entry firing) can't produce a duplicate.
Gateway-less users (no autostart entry) get nothing forced on them — the
pause step still returns None for them. POSIX is unaffected: enabled systemd
units already restart via `Restart=always`.
Windows-only; best-effort throughout (logs at debug and no-ops on any error).
Tests: pause returns the cold-start token only when installed, returns None
when not installed, resume cold-starts on the token, and resume skips the
cold-start when a gateway is already running.
On Windows, _pause_windows_gateways_for_update() force-kills every running
gateway before mutating the venv. Gateways mapped to a profile (via
profile.path/gateway.pid) were respawned afterward, but gateways with NO
profile mapping — e.g. a Windows Scheduled Task running
"pythonw.exe -m hermes_cli.main gateway run" — were force-killed and only
told to restart manually. After an auto-update/bootstrap the Telegram bot
stayed dead until manual intervention.
Now we snapshot each unmapped gateway's argv (psutil, guarded by
looks_like_gateway_command_line) before the kill and replay it through the
same detached watcher used for profile gateways, so unmapped gateways come
back automatically too.
Co-authored-by: Hermes Agent <agent@nousresearch.com>
hermes update on Windows still aborted with 'Another hermes.exe is running',
listing its own launcher shim(s) as concurrent instances (issues #29341,
#34795). The distlib Scripts\hermes.exe launcher spawns python.exe and waits;
detection runs in the python child, so the launcher shim shows up in
process_iter.
The prior fix walked the ancestor chain with per-hop current.parent() inside
'except: break' — the first psutil AccessDenied/NoSuchProcess (common on
Windows across session/elevation boundaries) bailed the walk early, leaving
the launcher in the candidate set and re-triggering the false positive.
- Switch to proc.parents() (whole ancestor list in one call), evaluate each
ancestor independently so one unreadable hop never strands the launcher.
- Only exclude ancestors whose exe is itself a shim, so a genuine second
hermes.exe under a non-Hermes parent (Desktop backend child) is still flagged.
- Message now prints a copy-pasteable 'taskkill /PID … /F' for the exact stale
PIDs so a user who already closed everything can self-remediate.
Conservative shim-only ancestor approach credited to the parallel attempts in
PRs #29358 (xxxigm) and #31808 (jquesnelle).
Follow-up to @Strontvod's fix.
Tests:
- Five new tests in test_update_concurrent_quarantine.py cover the parent-
chain exclusion: the .exe launcher is excluded, an unrelated sibling
hermes.exe is still reported, multi-level ancestry is fully excluded,
PID cycles in the parent chain don't hang, and a partially-stubbed
psutil (no Process attribute) degrades gracefully instead of crashing.
- New _fake_psutil_with_parent_chain helper builds a fuller stand-in
(Process / NoSuchProcess / AccessDenied + process_iter) than the
process_iter-only SimpleNamespace the older tests use.
Hardening:
- Broaden the except in the parent-walk to bare Exception. The original
fix listed (NoSuchProcess, AccessDenied, ValueError), but those names
are evaluated lazily during exception matching — if psutil is a partial
stub without the attribute, the exception handler itself raises
AttributeError that escapes. The function is documented as 'never raises'
(the surrounding update flow depends on it), so the broader catch keeps
the contract regardless of how the dependency is shaped.
AUTHOR_MAP:
- Map schepers.zander1@gmail.com -> Strontvod so the salvaged commit
resolves to @Strontvod in the release notes.
All 18 detect_concurrent + quarantine tests pass.
* fix(update): detect concurrent hermes.exe on Windows; retry + restart-defer quarantine
Closes#26670.
When 'hermes update' runs on Windows with another hermes.exe alive (most
commonly the Hermes Desktop Electron app's spawned backend) _quarantine_running_hermes_exe()
fails to rename the venv shim with [WinError 32]. uv pip install -e .
then exits 2, the git-pull fast path is silently abandoned, and the ZIP
fallback runs (and fails the same way) before eventually succeeding.
This change implements three of the five proposed fixes from the issue:
1. Concurrent-instance detection (preferred fix). _detect_concurrent_hermes_instances()
uses psutil to enumerate processes whose .exe is one of our venv shims
(hermes.exe / hermes-gateway.exe), excluding the caller's PID. When any
match exists, cmd_update prints an actionable message naming the
blocking PIDs and exits 2 BEFORE any destructive work. New --force flag
bypasses the gate.
2. Retry + restart-deferred fallback. _quarantine_running_hermes_exe()
now retries the rename up to 4 times with 100/250/500/1000 ms backoff
(covers the transient AV-scanner-handle case). If all retries fail,
it schedules the replacement via MoveFileExW with the OS deferred-rename
flag so the new shim can land at the original path and the update
completes; the old image is fully unloaded after the user's next
system restart.
3. Actionable warning text. The old 'Could not quarantine: [WinError 32]'
warning is replaced with one that names the likely culprits (Hermes
Desktop, REPLs, gateway, AV) and points to the new --force flag.
Tests:
- 13 new tests in tests/hermes_cli/test_update_concurrent_quarantine.py
covering: psutil-based enumeration, self-pid exclusion, case-insensitive
matching of .EXE, no-psutil graceful degradation, off-Windows no-op,
helpful warning formatting, retry-then-succeed, restart-deferred fallback,
cmd_update abort + exit code 2, and --force bypass.
- New autouse fixture in tests/hermes_cli/conftest.py defaults
_detect_concurrent_hermes_instances to [] so the rest of the suite
isn't tripped by the developer's own running hermes.exe. Opt-out marker
'real_concurrent_gate' registered in pyproject.toml.
- Updating docs page (website/docs/getting-started/updating.md) gains a
short section explaining the new Windows error and remediation.
* chore: refresh uv.lock to match pyproject.toml exact pins
aiohttp 3.13.4 -> 3.13.3 (matches pyproject pin: aiohttp==3.13.3)
anthropic 0.87.0 -> 0.86.0 (matches pyproject pin: anthropic==0.86.0)
hermes-agent 0.13.0 -> 0.14.0 (matches pyproject version)
CI's uv lock --check was failing on the merged state because main
drifted: pyproject.toml uses exact == pins for those two deps and the
hermes-agent version was bumped to 0.14.0 but the lockfile still had
0.13.0.
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