NAME

timeout — run a command with a time limit

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

timeout starts the command with its args. If the command is still running after duration, it is killed. By default, SIGTERM is sent. The special duration, zero, signifies no limit. Therefore a signal is never sent if duration is 0.

The options are as follows:

-k time, --kill-after time

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

-s sig, --signal sig

Specify the signal to send on timeout. By default, SIGTERM is sent.

-v, --verbose

Show information to stderr about any signal sent on timeout.

--foreground

Do not propagate timeout to the children of command.

--preserve-status

Exit with the same status as command, even if it times out and is killed.

DURATION FORMAT

The duration and time are non-negative integer or real (decimal) numbers, with an optional unit-specifying suffix. Values without an explicit unit are interpreted as seconds.

Supported unit symbols are:

EXIT STATUS

If the timeout was not reached, the exit status of command is returned.

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

If an invalid parameter is passed to -s or -k, the exit status returned is 125.

If command is an otherwise invalid program, the exit status returned is 126.

If command refers to a non-existing program, the exit status returned is 127.

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

EXAMPLES

Run sleep(1) with a time limit of 4 seconds. Since the command completes in 2 seconds, the exit status is 0:

$ timeout 4 sleep 2
$ echo $?
0

Run sleep(1) for 4 seconds and terminate process after 2 seconds. 124 is returned since no --preserve-status is used:

$ timeout 2 sleep 4
$ echo $?
124

Same as above but preserving status. Exit status is 128 + signal number (15 for SIGTERM):

$ timeout --preserve-status 2 sleep 4
$ echo $?
143

Same as above but sending SIGALRM (signal number 14) instead of SIGTERM:

$ timeout --preserve-status -s SIGALRM 2 sleep 4
$ echo $?
142

Try to fetch(1) the PDF version of the FreeBSD Handbook. Send a SIGTERM signal after 1 minute and send a SIGKILL signal 5 seconds later if the process refuses to stop:

$ timeout -k 5s 1m fetch \
> https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/doc/en/books/handbook/book.pdf

SEE ALSO

kill(1), nohup(1), signal(3), daemon(8)

STANDARDS

The timeout utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2024 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

HISTORY

The timeout command first appeared in FreeBSD 10.3.

The FreeBSD work is compatible with GNU timeout by Padraig Brady, from GNU Coreutils 8.21. The timeout utility first appeared in GNU Coreutils 7.0.

AUTHORS

Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@FreeBSD.org> and
Vsevolod Stakhov <vsevolod@FreeBSD.org>