Command line command to auto-kill a command after a certain amount of time

Maybe I'm not understanding the question, but this sounds doable directly, at least in bash:

( /path/to/slow command with options ) & sleep 5 ; kill $!

This runs the first command, inside the parenthesis, for five seconds, and then kills it. The entire operation runs synchronously, i.e. you won't be able to use your shell while it is busy waiting for the slow command. If that is not what you wanted, it should be possible to add another &.

The $! variable is a Bash builtin that contains the process ID of the most recently started subshell. It is important to not have the & inside the parenthesis, doing it that way loses the process ID.

I have a program called timeout that does that - written in C, originally in 1989 but updated periodically since then.

/*
@(#)File:           $RCSfile: timeout.c,v $
@(#)Version:        $Revision: 4.6 $
@(#)Last changed:   $Date: 2007/03/01 22:23:02 $
@(#)Purpose:        Run command with timeout monitor
@(#)Author:         J Leffler
@(#)Copyright:      (C) JLSS 1989,1997,2003,2005-07
*/

#define _POSIX_SOURCE       /* Enable kill() in <unistd.h> on Solaris 7 */
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include "stderr.h"

#define CHILD       0
#define FORKFAIL    -1

static const char usestr[] = "[-vV] -t time [-s signal] cmd [arg ...]";

#ifndef lint
/* Prevent over-aggressive optimizers from eliminating ID string */
const char jlss_id_timeout_c[] = "@(#)$Id: timeout.c,v 4.6 2007/03/01 22:23:02 jleffler Exp $";
#endif /* lint */

static void catcher(int signum)
{
    return;
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    pid_t   pid;
    int     tm_out;
    int     kill_signal;
    pid_t   corpse;
    int     status;
    int     opt;
    int     vflag = 0;

    err_setarg0(argv[0]);

    opterr = 0;
    tm_out = 0;
    kill_signal = SIGTERM;
    while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "vVt:s:")) != -1)
    {
        switch(opt)
        {
        case 'V':
            err_version("TIMEOUT", &"@(#)$Revision: 4.6 $ ($Date: 2007/03/01 22:23:02 $)"[4]);
            break;
        case 's':
            kill_signal = atoi(optarg);
            if (kill_signal <= 0 || kill_signal >= SIGRTMIN)
                err_error("signal number must be between 1 and %d\n", SIGRTMIN - 1);
            break;
        case 't':
            tm_out = atoi(optarg);
            if (tm_out <= 0)
                err_error("time must be greater than zero (%s)\n", optarg);
            break;
        case 'v':
            vflag = 1;
            break;
        default:
            err_usage(usestr);
            break;
        }
    }

    if (optind >= argc || tm_out == 0)
        err_usage(usestr);

    if ((pid = fork()) == FORKFAIL)
        err_syserr("failed to fork\n");
    else if (pid == CHILD)
    {
        execvp(argv[optind], &argv[optind]);
        err_syserr("failed to exec command %s\n", argv[optind]);
    }

    /* Must be parent -- wait for child to die */
    if (vflag)
        err_remark("time %d, signal %d, child PID %u\n", tm_out, kill_signal, (unsigned)pid);
    signal(SIGALRM, catcher);
    alarm((unsigned int)tm_out);
    while ((corpse = wait(&status)) != pid && errno != ECHILD)
    {
        if (errno == EINTR)
        {
            /* Timed out -- kill child */
            if (vflag)
                err_remark("timed out - send signal %d to process %d\n", (int)kill_signal, (int)pid);
            if (kill(pid, kill_signal) != 0)
                err_syserr("sending signal %d to PID %d - ", kill_signal, pid);
            corpse = wait(&status);
            break;
        }
    }

    alarm(0);
    if (vflag)
    {
        if (corpse == (pid_t) -1)
            err_syserr("no valid PID from waiting - ");
        else
            err_remark("child PID %u status 0x%04X\n", (unsigned)corpse, (unsigned)status);
    }

    if (corpse != pid)
        status = 2; /* I don't know what happened! */
    else if (WIFEXITED(status))
        status = WEXITSTATUS(status);
    else if (WIFSIGNALED(status))
        status = WTERMSIG(status);
    else
        status = 2; /* I don't know what happened! */

    return(status);
}

If you want the 'official' code for 'stderr.h' and 'stderr.c', contact me (see my profile).

There is also ulimit, which can be used to limit the execution time available to sub-processes.

ulimit -t 10

Limits the process to 10 seconds of CPU time.

To actually use it to limit a new process, rather than the current process, you may wish to use a wrapper script:

#! /usr/bin/env python

import os
os.system("ulimit -t 10; other-command-here")

other-command can be any tool. I was running a Java, Python, C and Scheme versions of different sorting algorithms, and logging how long they took, whilst limiting execution time to 30 seconds. A Cocoa-Python application generated the various command lines - including the arguments - and collated the times into a CSV file, but it was really just fluff on top of the command provided above.

Perl one liner, just for kicks:

perl -e '$s = shift; $SIG{ALRM} = sub { print STDERR "Timeout!\n"; kill INT => $p }; exec(@ARGV) unless $p = fork; alarm $s; waitpid $p, 0' 10 yes foo

This prints 'foo' for ten seconds, then times out. Replace '10' with any number of seconds, and 'yes foo' with any command.

Try something like:

# This function is called with a timeout (in seconds) and a pid.
# After the timeout expires, if the process still exists, it attempts
# to kill it.
function timeout() {
    sleep $1
    # kill -0 tests whether the process exists
    if kill -0 $2 > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then
        echo "killing process $2"
        kill $2 > /dev/null 2>&1
    else
        echo "process $2 already completed"
    fi
}

<your command> &
cpid=$!
timeout 3 $cpid
wait $cpid > /dev/null 2>&
exit $?

It has the downside that if your process' pid is reused within the timeout, it may kill the wrong process. This is highly unlikely, but you may be starting 20000+ processes per second. This could be fixed.

How about using the expect tool?

## run a command, aborting if timeout exceeded, e.g. timed-run 20 CMD ARGS ...
timed-run() {
  # timeout in seconds
  local tmout="$1"
  shift
  env CMD_TIMEOUT="$tmout" expect -f - "$@" <<"EOF"
# expect script follows
eval spawn -noecho $argv
set timeout $env(CMD_TIMEOUT)
expect {
   timeout {
      send_error "error: operation timed out\n"
      exit 1
   }
   eof
}
EOF
}

pure bash:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $# < 2 ]]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 timeout cmd [options]"
  exit 1
fi

TIMEOUT="$1"
shift

BOSSPID=$$

(
  sleep $TIMEOUT
  kill -9 -$BOSSPID
)&
TIMERPID=$!

trap "kill -9 $TIMERPID" EXIT

eval "$@"