Using module 'subprocess' with timeout

I don't know much about the low level details; but, given that in python 2.6 the API offers the ability to wait for threads and terminate processes, what about running the process in a separate thread?

import subprocess, threading

class Command(object):
    def __init__(self, cmd):
        self.cmd = cmd
        self.process = None

    def run(self, timeout):
        def target():
            print 'Thread started'
            self.process = subprocess.Popen(self.cmd, shell=True)
            self.process.communicate()
            print 'Thread finished'

        thread = threading.Thread(target=target)
        thread.start()

        thread.join(timeout)
        if thread.is_alive():
            print 'Terminating process'
            self.process.terminate()
            thread.join()
        print self.process.returncode

command = Command("echo 'Process started'; sleep 2; echo 'Process finished'")
command.run(timeout=3)
command.run(timeout=1)

The output of this snippet in my machine is:

Thread started
Process started
Process finished
Thread finished
0
Thread started
Process started
Terminating process
Thread finished
-15

where it can be seen that, in the first execution, the process finished correctly (return code 0), while the in the second one the process was terminated (return code -15).

I haven't tested in windows; but, aside from updating the example command, I think it should work since I haven't found in the documentation anything that says that thread.join or process.terminate is not supported.

jcollado's answer can be simplified using the threading.Timer class:

import shlex
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
from threading import Timer

def run(cmd, timeout_sec):
    proc = Popen(shlex.split(cmd), stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
    timer = Timer(timeout_sec, proc.kill)
    try:
        timer.start()
        stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()
    finally:
        timer.cancel()

# Examples: both take 1 second
run("sleep 1", 5)  # process ends normally at 1 second
run("sleep 5", 1)  # timeout happens at 1 second

If you're on Unix,

import signal
  ...
class Alarm(Exception):
    pass

def alarm_handler(signum, frame):
    raise Alarm

signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, alarm_handler)
signal.alarm(5*60)  # 5 minutes
try:
    stdoutdata, stderrdata = proc.communicate()
    signal.alarm(0)  # reset the alarm
except Alarm:
    print "Oops, taking too long!"
    # whatever else

Prepending the Linux command timeout isn't a bad workaround and it worked for me.

cmd = "timeout 20 "+ cmd
subprocess.Popen(cmd.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
(output, err) = p.communicate()

I've implemented what I could gather from a few of these. This works in Windows, and since this is a community wiki, I figure I would share my code as well:

class Command(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, cmd, outFile, errFile, timeout):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.cmd = cmd
        self.process = None
        self.outFile = outFile
        self.errFile = errFile
        self.timed_out = False
        self.timeout = timeout

    def run(self):
        self.process = subprocess.Popen(self.cmd, stdout = self.outFile, \
            stderr = self.errFile)

        while (self.process.poll() is None and self.timeout > 0):
            time.sleep(1)
            self.timeout -= 1

        if not self.timeout > 0:
            self.process.terminate()
            self.timed_out = True
        else:
            self.timed_out = False

Then from another class or file:

        outFile =  tempfile.SpooledTemporaryFile()
        errFile =   tempfile.SpooledTemporaryFile()

        executor = command.Command(c, outFile, errFile, timeout)
        executor.daemon = True
        executor.start()

        executor.join()
        if executor.timed_out:
            out = 'timed out'
        else:
            outFile.seek(0)
            errFile.seek(0)
            out = outFile.read()
            err = errFile.read()

        outFile.close()
        errFile.close()

python 2.7

import time
import subprocess

def run_command(cmd, timeout=0):
    start_time = time.time()
    df = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
    while timeout and df.poll() == None:
        if time.time()-start_time >= timeout:
            df.kill()
            return -1, ""
    output = '\n'.join(df.communicate()).strip()
    return df.returncode, output

Example of captured output after timeout tested in Python 3.7.8:

try:
    return subprocess.run(command, shell=True, capture_output=True, timeout=20, cwd=cwd, universal_newlines=True)
except subprocess.TimeoutExpired as e:
    print(e.output.decode(encoding="utf-8", errors="ignore"))
    assert False;

The exception subprocess.TimeoutExpired has the output and other members:

cmd - Command that was used to spawn the child process.

timeout - Timeout in seconds.

output - Output of the child process if it was captured by run() or check_output(). Otherwise, None.

stdout - Alias for output, for symmetry with stderr.

stderr - Stderr output of the child process if it was captured by run(). Otherwise, None.

More info: https://docs.python.org/3/library/subprocess.html#subprocess.TimeoutExpired

I had the problem that I wanted to terminate a multithreading subprocess if it took longer than a given timeout length. I wanted to set a timeout in Popen(), but it did not work. Then, I realized that Popen().wait() is equal to call() and so I had the idea to set a timeout within the .wait(timeout=xxx) method, which finally worked. Thus, I solved it this way:

import os
import sys
import signal
import subprocess
from multiprocessing import Pool

cores_for_parallelization = 4
timeout_time = 15  # seconds

def main():
    jobs = [...YOUR_JOB_LIST...]
    with Pool(cores_for_parallelization) as p:
        p.map(run_parallel_jobs, jobs)

def run_parallel_jobs(args):
    # Define the arguments including the paths
    initial_terminal_command = 'C:\\Python34\\python.exe'  # Python executable
    function_to_start = 'C:\\temp\\xyz.py'  # The multithreading script
    final_list = [initial_terminal_command, function_to_start]
    final_list.extend(args)

    # Start the subprocess and determine the process PID
    subp = subprocess.Popen(final_list)  # starts the process
    pid = subp.pid

    # Wait until the return code returns from the function by considering the timeout. 
    # If not, terminate the process.
    try:
        returncode = subp.wait(timeout=timeout_time)  # should be zero if accomplished
    except subprocess.TimeoutExpired:
        # Distinguish between Linux and Windows and terminate the process if 
        # the timeout has been expired
        if sys.platform == 'linux2':
            os.kill(pid, signal.SIGTERM)
        elif sys.platform == 'win32':
            subp.terminate()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Late answer for Linux only, but in case someone wants to use subprocess.getstatusoutput(), where the timeout argument isn't available, you can use the built-in Linux timeout on the beginning of the command, i.e.:

import subprocess

timeout = 25 # seconds
cmd = f"timeout --preserve-status --foreground {timeout} ping duckgo.com"
exit_c, out = subprocess.getstatusoutput(cmd)

if (exit_c == 0):
    print("success")
else:
    print("Error: ", out)

timeout Arguments:

• --preserve-status : Preserving the Exit Status
• --foreground : Running in Foreground
• 25 : timeout value in seconds

for python 2.6+, use gevent

 from gevent.subprocess import Popen, PIPE, STDOUT

 def call_sys(cmd, timeout):
      p= Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdout=PIPE)
      output, _ = p.communicate(timeout=timeout)
      assert p.returncode == 0, p. returncode
      return output

 call_sys('./t.sh', 2)

 # t.sh example
 sleep 5
 echo done
 exit 1

Sometimes you need to process (ffmpeg) without using communicate() and in this case you need asynchronous timeout, a practical way to do this using ttldict

pip install ttldict

from ttldict import  TTLOrderedDict   
sp_timeout = TTLOrderedDict(default_ttl=10)

def kill_on_timeout(done, proc):
    while True:
        now = time.time()
        if sp_timeout.get('exp_time') == None:
                proc.kill()
                break
    
process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, text=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
            
sp_timeout['exp_time'] = time.time()
            
done = Event()
watcher = Thread(target=kill_on_timeout, args=(done, process))
watcher.daemon = True
watcher.start()
done.set()

for line in process.stdout:
.......