Run a process and kill it if it doesn't end within one hour

kill, process, python

Solution

The `subprocess` module will be your friend. Start the process to get a `Popen` object, then pass it to a function like this. Note that this only raises exception on timeout. If desired you can catch the exception and call the `kill()` method on the `Popen` process. (kill is new in Python 2.6, btw)

import time

def wait_timeout(proc, seconds):
    """Wait for a process to finish, or raise exception after timeout"""
    start = time.time()
    end = start + seconds
    interval = min(seconds / 1000.0, .25)

    while True:
        result = proc.poll()
        if result is not None:
            return result
        if time.time() >= end:
            raise RuntimeError("Process timed out")
        time.sleep(interval)

Problem

I need to do the following in Python. I want to spawn a process (subprocess module?), and: - if the process ends normally, to continue exactly from the moment it terminates; - if, otherwise, the process "gets stuck" and doesn't terminate within (say) one hour, to kill it and continue (possibly giving it another try, in a loop). What is the most elegant way to accomplish this?

Original source