{"id":1685,"date":"2019-12-13T11:07:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T05:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2019-12-13T11:31:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T06:01:00","slug":"how-to-run-a-command-with-time-limit-timeout-in-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/how-to-run-a-command-with-time-limit-timeout-in-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Run a Command with Time Limit (Timeout) In Linux"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Description : <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of Linux is to help you be as fast and efficient as possible. One property of a Linux command is the time limit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can set a time limit for any command you want. If the time expires, the command stops executing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this short tutorial, you are going to learn two methods on how you can use a time limit in your commands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Run Linux Commands Using the timeout Tool<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linux has a command-line utility called a timeout<\/strong>, which enables you to execute a command with a time limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its syntax is as follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

timeout [OPTION] DURATION COMMAND [ARG]...<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
 To use the command, you specify a timeout<\/strong> value (in seconds) with the command you want to run. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance, to timeout a ping command<\/a> after 5<\/strong> seconds, you can run the following command. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
# timeout 5s ping google.com<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
 You do not have to specify the (s)<\/strong> after number 5<\/strong>. The command below is the same and will still work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
# timeout 5 ping google.com<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Other suffixes include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
  • m<\/code> representing minutes<\/li>
  • h<\/code> representing hours<\/li>
  • d<\/code> representing days<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    Sometimes commands may continue to run even after timeout sends the initial signal. In such instances, you can use the --kill-after<\/code> option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Here\u2019s the syntax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    -k, --kill-after=DURATION<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    You need to specify a duration to let timeout<\/strong> know after how much time the kill signal is to be sent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    For example, the command shown is going to be terminated after 8<\/strong> seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    # timeout 8s tail -f \/var\/log\/syslog<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Run Linux Commands Using Timelimit Program<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
    The Timelimit<\/strong> program runs a given command then terminates the process after a specified time using a given signal. It initially passes a warning signal, and then after a timeout, it sends the kill signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Unlike the timeout<\/strong> option, Timelimit<\/strong> has more options such as killsig<\/strong>, warnsig<\/strong>, killtime<\/strong>, and warntime<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Timelimit<\/strong> can be found in the repositories of Debian<\/strong>-based systems and to install it, use the following command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    $ sudo apt install timelimit<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
     For Arch-based<\/strong> systems, you can install it using AUR<\/strong> helper programs e.g., Pacaur<\/strong> Pacman<\/strong>, and Packer<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    # Pacman -S timelimit\n# pacaur -S timelimit\n# packer -S timelimit<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
     After installation, run the following command and specify the time. In this example, you can use 10<\/strong> seconds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    $ timelimit -t10 tail -f \/var\/log\/pacman.log<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
     Note that if you don\u2019t specify arguments, Timelimit<\/strong> uses the default values: warntime=3600<\/strong> seconds, warnsig=15<\/strong>, killtime=120<\/strong>, and killsig=9<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Conclusion<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
    The Timeout<\/strong> command is easy to use, but the Timelimit<\/strong> utility is a bit complicated but has more options. You can choose the most suitable option depending on your needs.
    <\/p>\n\n\n\n
     We hope you\u2019ve found this useful! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    Description : The goal of Linux is to help you be as fast and efficient as possible. One property of a Linux command is the time limit. You can set a time limit for any command you want. If the time expires, the command stops executing. In this short tutorial, you are going to learn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-categorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaipurhosting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}