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From: bet@ecsvax.UUCP (Bennett E. Todd III)
Newsgroups: net.sources.d
Subject: Re: Detecting running processes... this one's portable
Message-ID: 
Date: Wed, 13-Aug-86 09:03:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1919
Posted: Wed Aug 13 09:03:41 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Aug-86 20:24:20 EDT
References:    
Reply-To: bet@ecsvax.UUCP (Bennett E. Todd III)
Distribution: net
Organization: Duke University Computation Center
Lines: 35
Keywords: sleep,kill

In article  jvc@stl.UUCP (Vic Churchill) writes:
> [...]
>I would like a way to run a process for a specified time
>duration and then "gracefully" zap it.
> [...] So something like "fuze foo 30"
>has the effect :
>       __ run foo __________________ eek!
>______/                      ^      ^   ___ back to shell
>      \__ sit'n'wait 29 mins | 1min |__/
>			     /      /
>		a gentle warning   /
>			       a killer

I had a not entirely unrelated wish: I was trying to debug a program
that [1] put the terminal into raw mode (therefore disabling keyboard
generated interrupts), and [2] was hanging inextricably. I didn't need
to be able to set the time; 2 minutes sufficed. 2 minutes is therefore
hardcoded into this shell script; you can rig whatever command parser
you want on this (basically trivial) hack. I went through several
revisions, the first of which was in fact a ps/grep cludge. This one,
based on suggestions from various net readers, seemed to be the
cleanest. I call it "timout":

	( sleep 120 ; kill -9 $$ ) &
	exec $*

That's it. Settable time parameters, advanced warning before the axe
falls, and suchlike "are left as exercises for the reader". It did what
I needed.

-Bennett
-- 

Bennett Todd -- Duke Computation Center, Durham, NC 27706-7756; (919) 684-3695
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