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StdioServerParameters exposes no preexec_fn / rlimit / process-group hook for spawned MCP server subprocess

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#3,457 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
52/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
python
Domain
backend, security

Research direction

Start by locating StdioServerParameters and the stdio_client context manager, then trace how they create the subprocess and which subprocess.Popen options are currently passed. Compare the requested pre-exec, process-group, resource-limit, or spawn-factory approaches across macOS and Linux. Done means the public API exposes a documented process-control hook and its behavior is covered by the relevant tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Context

StdioServerParameters (and the stdio_client context manager that spawns the server subprocess) expose no hook to control the spawned child process's resource limits or process-group assignment at fork time.

Problem

A client that spawns an untrusted or third-party MCP server via stdio cannot, from the SDK public API:

  • set CPU / memory / FD / address-space rlimits on the child,
  • place the child in its own process group (so a runaway child can be killed as a group without orphaning grandchildren),
  • set a preexec_fn (POSIX) or equivalent to run arbitrary setup between fork and exec.

StdioServerParameters signature (command, args, env, cwd, encoding, encoding_error_handler) has no slot for any of these. stdio_client owns the subprocess spawn internally, so a caller cannot inject a custom Popen either.

Impact

Downstream hosts (e.g. inference servers spawning MCP tool servers) cannot enforce hard resource caps or reliable teardown on a hung/misbehaving MCP server subprocess from the client side. The only mitigation available today is a bounded connect timeout around __aenter__, which does not cover a server that accepts the connection then later runs away.

Request

Expose at least one of:

  1. an optional preexec_fn / process_group / rlimit-style kwarg on StdioServerParameters (or stdio_client), passed through to the underlying subprocess.Popen, or
  2. an injection point for a custom Popen factory / spawn callable.

(1) mirrors subprocess.Popen(..., preexec_fn=..., start_new_session=...) and would let hosts enforce resource limits + process-group isolation without forking the SDK.

Environment: mcp python-sdk, macOS / Linux. Filed from fusion-mlx (local MLX inference host) where we need to cap spawned MCP server subprocesses.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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