Use _stop_event consistently across all threads as the way to signal that it should stop. Add thread joins with timeouts to allow the program to exit cleanly

core/status_reporter.py

@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+import logging
 import os
 from datetime import datetime
 from threading import Event, Thread
@@ -14,6 +15,8 @@ from core.prometheus_metrics_handler import alerts_gauge, memory_use_gauge, spot
 from telnetserver.telnetserver import TELNET_SERVER
 from webserver.webserver import WEB_SERVER
 
+logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
+
 
 class StatusReporter:
     """Provides a timed update of the application's status data."""
@@ -33,13 +36,17 @@ class StatusReporter:
     def start(self):
         """Start the reporter thread"""
 
-        self._thread = Thread(target=self._run, name="StatusReporter")
+        self._thread = Thread(target=self._run, name="StatusReporter", daemon=True)
         self._thread.start()
 
     def stop(self):
         """Stop any threads and prepare for application shutdown"""
 
         self._stop_event.set()
+        if self._thread:
+            self._thread.join(timeout=15)
+            if self._thread.is_alive():
+                logger.warning("Status reporter worker thread did not exit on time and will be killed.")
 
     def _run(self):
         """Thread entry point: report immediately on startup, then on each interval until stopped"""