coreutils: timeout invocation
23.6 ‘timeout’: Run a command with a time limit
===============================================
‘timeout’ runs the given COMMAND and kills it if it is still running
after the specified time interval. Synopsis:
timeout [OPTION] DURATION COMMAND [ARG]...
COMMAND must not be a special built-in utility (⇒Special
built-in utilities).
The program accepts the following options. Also see ⇒Common
options. Options must precede operands.
‘--preserve-status’
Return the exit status of the managed COMMAND on timeout, rather
than a specific exit status indicating a timeout. This is useful
if the managed COMMAND supports running for an indeterminate amount
of time.
‘--foreground’
Don’t create a separate background program group, so that the
managed COMMAND can use the foreground TTY normally. This is
needed to support timing out commands not started directly from an
interactive shell, in two situations.
1. COMMAND is interactive and needs to read from the terminal for
example
2. the user wants to support sending signals directly to COMMAND
from the terminal (like Ctrl-C for example)
Note in this mode of operation, any children of COMMAND will not be
timed out. Also SIGCONT will not be sent to COMMAND, as it’s
generally not needed with foreground processes, and can cause
intermittent signal delivery issues with programs that are monitors
themselves (like GDB for example).
‘-k DURATION’
‘--kill-after=DURATION’
Ensure the monitored COMMAND is killed by also sending a ‘KILL’
signal, after the specified DURATION. Without this option, if the
selected signal proves not to be fatal, ‘timeout’ does not kill the
COMMAND.
‘-s SIGNAL’
‘--signal=SIGNAL’
Send this SIGNAL to COMMAND on timeout, rather than the default
‘TERM’ signal. SIGNAL may be a name like ‘HUP’ or a number. ⇒
Signal specifications.
‘-v’
‘--verbose’
Diagnose to stderr, any signal sent upon timeout.
DURATION is a floating point number in either the current or the C
locale (⇒Floating point) followed by an optional unit:
‘s’ for seconds (the default)
‘m’ for minutes
‘h’ for hours
‘d’ for days
A duration of 0 disables the associated timeout. Note that the
actual timeout duration is dependent on system conditions, which should
be especially considered when specifying sub-second timeouts.
Exit status:
124 if COMMAND times out
125 if ‘timeout’ itself fails
126 if COMMAND is found but cannot be invoked
127 if COMMAND cannot be found
137 if COMMAND is sent the KILL(9) signal (128+9)
the exit status of COMMAND otherwise
Info Catalog
coreutils: stdbuf invocation
coreutils: Modified command invocation