Command line command to auto-kill a command after a certain amount of time

macos unix command-line utilities cpu-usage
dreeves picture dreeves · Mar 2, 2009 · Viewed 27.8k times · Source

I'd like to automatically kill a command after a certain amount of time. I have in mind an interface like this:

% constrain 300 ./foo args

Which would run "./foo" with "args" but automatically kill it if it's still running after 5 minutes.

It might be useful to generalize the idea to other constraints, such as autokilling a process if it uses too much memory.

Are there any existing tools that do that, or has anyone written such a thing?

ADDED: Jonathan's solution is precisely what I had in mind and it works like a charm on linux, but I can't get it to work on Mac OSX. I got rid of the SIGRTMIN which lets it compile fine, but the signal just doesn't get sent to the child process. Anyone know how to make this work on Mac?

[Added: Note that an update is available from Jonathan that works on Mac and elsewhere.]

Answer

Roger Dahl picture Roger Dahl · Aug 24, 2011

GNU Coreutils includes the timeout command, installed by default on many systems.

https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/timeout-invocation.html

To watch free -m for one minute, then kill it by sending a TERM signal:

timeout 1m watch free -m

Related questions

How can I use xargs to copy files that have spaces and quotes in their names?

I'm trying to copy a bunch of files below a directory and a number of the files have spaces and single-quotes in their names. When I try to string together find and grep with xargs, I get the following error: …

Read More
Limit the output of the TOP command to a specific process name

If you call the top command, you get all the running processes. But how can I limit the output only to a certain process name like "java"? I've tried this top -l 2 | grep java but in this way you get …

Read More
Getting the battery level of a Bluetooth headset on Mac OSX

I would like to know if it is possible to get the battery level of a connected Bluetooth device (for example, a headset) on Mac OSX. I'm looking for a command line or a library that would offer this possibility. …

Read More