TIMELIMIT(1) General Commands Manual TIMELIMIT(1) NAME timelimit -- effectively limit the absolute execution time of a process SYNOPSIS timelimit [-pq] [-S killsig] [-s warnsig] [-T killtime] [-t warntime] command [arguments ...] timelimit --features DESCRIPTION The timelimit utility executes a given command with the supplied arguments and terminates the spawned process after a given time with a given signal. If the process exits before the time limit has elapsed, timelimit will silently exit, too. Options: --features List the compile-time features supported by this version of timelimit: timelimit Always present, with the version of the timelimit tool. subsecond Present if timeouts with subsecond precision are supported, with version 1.0. -p If the child process is terminated by a signal, timelimit propa- gates this condition, i.e. sends the same signal to itself. This allows the program executing timelimit to determine whether the child process was terminated by a signal or actually exited with an exit code larger than 128. -q Quiet operation - timelimit does not output diagnostic messages about signals sent to the child process. -S killsig Specify the number of the signal to be sent to the process killtime seconds after warntime has expired. Defaults to 9 (SIGKILL). -s warnsig Specify the number of the signal to be sent to the process warntime seconds after it has been started. Defaults to 15 (SIGTERM). -T killtime Specify the maximum execution time of the process before sending killsig after warnsig has been sent. Defaults to 120 seconds. -t warntime Specify the maximum execution time of the process in seconds before sending warnsig. Defaults to 3600 seconds. On systems that support the setitimer(2) system call, the warntime and killtime values may be specified in fractional seconds with microsecond precision. ENVIRONMENT KILLSIG The killsig to use if the -S option was not specified. KILLTIME The killtime to use if the -T option was not specified. WARNSIG The warnsig to use if the -s option was not specified. WARNTIME The warntime to use if the -t option was not specified. EXIT STATUS If the child process exits normally, the timelimit utility will pass its exit code on up. If the child process is terminated by a signal and the -p flag was not specified, the timelimit utility's exit status is 128 plus the signal number, similar to sh(1). If the -p flag was specified, the timelimit utility will raise the signal itself so that its own parent process may in turn reliably distinguish between a signal and a larger than 128 exit code. In rare cases, the timelimit utility may encounter a system or user error; then, its exit status is one of the standard sysexits(3) values: EX_USAGE The command-line parameters and options were incorrectly specified. EX_SOFTWARE The timelimit utility itself received an unexpected signal while waiting for the child process to terminate. EX_OSERR The timelimit utility was unable to execute the child process, wait for it to terminate, or examine its exit status. EXAMPLES The following examples are shown as given to the shell: timelimit -p /usr/local/bin/rsync rsync://some.host/dir /opt/mirror Run the rsync program to mirror a WWW or FTP site and kill it if it runs longer than 1 hour (that is 3600 seconds) with SIGTERM. If the rsync process does not exit after receiving the SIGTERM, timelimit issues a SIGKILL 120 seconds after the SIGTERM. If the rsync process is terminated by a signal, timelimit will itself raise this signal. tcpserver 0 8888 timelimit -t600 -T300 /opt/services/chat/stats Start a tcpserver(n) process listening on tcp port 8888; each client con- nection shall invoke an instance of an IRC statistics tool under /opt/services/chat and kill it after 600 seconds have elapsed. If the stats process is still running after the SIGTERM, it will be killed by a SIGKILL sent 300 seconds later. env WARNTIME=4.99 WARNSIG=1 KILLTIME=1.000001 timelimit sh stats.sh Start a shell script and kill it with a SIGHUP in a little under 5 seconds. If the shell gets stuck and does not respond to the SIGHUP, kill it with the default SIGKILL just a bit over a second afterwards. SEE ALSO kill(1), rsync(1), signal(3), tcpserver(n) STANDARDS No standards documentation was harmed in the process of creating timelimit. BUGS Please report any bugs in timelimit to the author. AUTHOR The timelimit utility was conceived and written by Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net> with contributions and suggestions by Karsten W Rohrbach <karsten@rohrbach.de>, Teddy Hogeborn <teddy@fukt.bsnet.se>, and Tomasz Nowak <nowak2000@poczta.onet.pl>. FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly April 14, 2018 TIMELIMIT(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | EXIT STATUS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | BUGS | AUTHOR
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