NAME

timeout — run a command with a time limit

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The timeout utility executes command, with any args, and kills it if it is still running after the specified duration. If duration is 0, the timeout is disabled.

The options are as follows:

-k time, --kill-after=time

Send a second signal, SIGKILL, if the command is still running time after the first signal was sent.

-s sig, --signal=sig

Specify the signal to send on timeout, instead of the default SIGTERM.

--foreground

Do not propagate the timeout signal to children processes.

--preserve-status

Always exit with the same status as command, even if the timeout was reached.

DURATION FORMAT

duration and time may contain a decimal fraction. The value defaults to seconds unless a unit suffix is given.

The supported unit suffixes are:

EXIT STATUS

If the timeout was not reached or --preserve-status was set, the exit status of command is returned.

If the timeout was reached and --preserve-status was not set, an exit status of 124 is returned.

If command exited after receiving a signal, the exit status returned is the signal number plus 128.

SEE ALSO

kill(1), signal(3)

HISTORY

The timeout utility first appeared in GNU Coreutils 7.0 and has been available since OpenBSD 7.0.