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Execute a command with a timeout

Terminal - Execute a command with a timeout
timeout 10 sleep 11
2009-09-23 14:59:40
User: syssyphus
Functions: sleep
16
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Execute a command with a timeout
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Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
perl -e "alarm 10; exec @ARGV" "somecommand"
2009-09-23 12:03:55
User: jgc
Functions: perl
0
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Execute a command with a timeout

In this example the command "somecommand" will be executed and sent a SIGALARM signal if it runs for more than 10 seconds. It uses the perl alarm function. It's not 100% accurate on timing, but close enough. I found this really useful when executing scripts and commands that I knew might hang E.g. ones that connect to services that might not be running. Importantly this can be used within a sequential script. The command will not release control until either the command completes or the timeout is hit.

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

I can not find the timeout command on my centos5. Does it depend on some special Distribution?

Comment by hywl51 18 weeks ago

it is in the ubuntu repo,

apt-get install timeout

according to the man page it is from here:

http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/tct.html

but looked around a bit and it didn't jump out at me.

Comment by syssyphus 18 weeks ago

this bug report indicates that the timeout command is no longer part of tct, so.... you may have to dig up an old version of tct in order to install it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tct/+bug/78742

Comment by syssyphus 18 weeks ago

perhaps this would be a better alternative, I have not tested it however.

http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/D/DE/DEXTER/timeout-0.11.pl

Comment by syssyphus 18 weeks ago

Your point of view

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