Google Cloud Storage - GSUtil Update fails because file used by another process

Question

We use an ETL process to pull data from Google Cloud Storage, but annoyingly it hangs everytime Google releases udpates to GSUtil, because it sits at a prompt asking if you want to update the library. Fine if you are doing this manually, but not cool when it's being run in an automated SSIS package, as jobs don't finish for days and you keep wasting time with the same stupid cause.

I thought I was going to be cleaver, and add "python gsutil update -n" to the top of the bash script I'm automating the building/execution of in my SSIS Package in the hope to curb this problem, but when I run this command from the prompt in either Windows Server 2008r2 or Windows 7 I get the following:

C:\gsutil>python gsutil update -f -n
Copying gs://pub/gsutil.tar.gz...
OSError: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

Any help?

P.S. - Also, Google engineers... can you PLEASE remove these prompts? for all of us using these tools in automated processes? I have other things to work on, instead of constantly going back to things like this every few days/weeks.

Answer 1

What version of gsutil are you running?

Also, to be clear: Are you talking about the fact that gsutil checks for available software updates periodically, and if it finds them it then prompts you whether you want to update? Or are you talking about the fact that the gsutil update command asks if you want to perform the update?

If the former, gsutil shouldn't be performing this check/prompting if you are running gsutil from a script not connected to at TTY. If that's not working correctly we'd like to know.

And also, if that's the problem you're having, you can completely disable automated software update checks by setting software_update_check_period=0 in the [GSUtil] section of your .boto config file.