waitmax(1) - Linux man page

Name

waitmax - allow program to run at most a specified amount of time

Synopsis

waitmax [-s signum] maxtime programm [ args...]

Description

waitmax executes program in a new process. If that process does not exit within at most maxtime seconds, it is being killed with signal TERM.

Options

-s, --signal signum

Use signum to kill the program instead of TERM.

-h, --help

Show short help and exit.

-V, --version

Show version and exit.

Exit Values

255

The program has been signalled and terminated, because the time has elapsed, before the program has exited itself.

254

The program has exited neither by signal nor normally. Strange. This should never happen.

253

The program couldn't be executed.

128+signum

The program has terminated with signal signum before the time has elapsed (not by waitmax, but by itself or some other process).

1

Waitmax has been called with illegal options.

Credits

Many thanks to Jürgen Kuchenbecker, who had the idea of writing such a program and who assisted me in coding and testing it.

Author

waitmax was written by Mathias Kettner. The most current source code is located at http://mathias-kettner.de/waitmax.html.