timeout: run a command with a time limit
Table of Contents
If you want to ensure a command does not take too much time to execute, you can add a time limit after which the command will be killed.
Installation
timeout is part of coreutils, so it’s probably already installed on your computer.
Usage
This command is pretty simple: type timeout, a time limit and the target command:
timeout <DURATION> <COMMAND><DURATION>: a floating point number with an optional suffix:s(seconds, the default),m(minutes),h(hours) ord(days).
As an example, to limit the duration of a python script to 2 minutes:
timeout 2m python3 myscript.pyAfter 2 minutes, the target command (python3 myscript.py) will be killed (TERM signal). To change the kill signal, use -s=<SIGNAL>. <SIGNAL> can be a name or a number. Run kill -l for a list of signals.
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