TIMEOUT

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: December 2009
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NAME

timeout - run a command with a time limit

SYNOPSIS

timeout [OPTION] NUMBER[SUFFIX] COMMAND [ARG]...
timeout [OPTION]

DESCRIPTION

Start COMMAND, and kill it if still running after NUMBER seconds. SUFFIX may be `s' for seconds (the default), `m' for minutes, `h' for hours or `d' for days.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-s, --signal=SIGNAL
: specify the signal to be sent on timeout. SIGNAL may be a name like `HUP' or a number. See `kill -l` for a list of signals
--help: display this help and exit
--version: output version information and exit

If the command times out, then we exit with status 124, otherwise the normal exit status of the command is returned. If no signal is specified, the TERM signal is sent. The TERM signal will kill processes which do not catch this signal. For other processes, it may be necessary to use the KILL (9) signal, since this signal cannot be caught.

AUTHOR

Written by Padraig Brady.

REPORTING BUGS

Report timeout bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.