I have a scheduled cron job (which is actually a shell script). I'd like to limit the script execution time as it can work unacceptably long. For some reason I can not limit the script execution time from inside the script. Actually, I want my system to force the task termination if it runs more than N hours. Please advise.
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Maybe this helps http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2387485/limiting-the-time-a-program-runs-in-linux – dwalter Aug 30 '12 at 11:26
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2See [Can I limit the runtime of a cronjob](http://serverfault.com/a/257347) over at serverfault.com. – Christian.K Aug 30 '12 at 11:41
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I'm responding by myself just because none answered.
0 * * * * timeout -s 9 3540 /path/to/your_command.sh
will send a SIGINT to your command if it hasn't completed in 59 minutes.
Maksym Polshcha
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not works at me `*/2 * * * * /usr/bin/timeout -s 9 60 && cd /usr/etc && python2.6 hello.py 10.10.252.120 437 >> res.txt ` – Yohanim May 14 '18 at 07:14
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Using an -s 9 is a little extreme as it doesn't let the process do any cleanup. Yes, it will kill the process if it can be killed, but > 90% of the time a -s 1, which requests a graceful hangup, will suffice.
Larry Dillon
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