How do I limit the running time of a BASH script

Check out this link. The idea is just that you would run myscript.sh as a subprocess of your script and record its PID, then kill it if it runs too long.

See the http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/timeout script the functionality of which has been integrated into newer coreutils:

#!/bin/sh

# Execute a command with a timeout

# License: LGPLv2
# Author:
#    http://www.pixelbeat.org/
# Notes:
#    Note there is a timeout command packaged with coreutils since v7.0
#    If the timeout occurs the exit status is 124.
#    There is an asynchronous (and buggy) equivalent of this
#    script packaged with bash (under /usr/share/doc/ in my distro),
#    which I only noticed after writing this.
#    I noticed later again that there is a C equivalent of this packaged
#    with satan by Wietse Venema, and copied to forensics by Dan Farmer.
# Changes:
#    V1.0, Nov  3 2006, Initial release
#    V1.1, Nov 20 2007, Brad Greenlee <[email protected]>
#                       Make more portable by using the 'CHLD'
#                       signal spec rather than 17.
#    V1.3, Oct 29 2009, Ján Sáreník <[email protected]>
#                       Even though this runs under dash,ksh etc.
#                       it doesn't actually timeout. So enforce bash for now.
#                       Also change exit on timeout from 128 to 124
#                       to match coreutils.
#    V2.0, Oct 30 2009, Ján Sáreník <[email protected]>
#                       Rewritten to cover compatibility with other
#                       Bourne shell implementations (pdksh, dash)

if [ "$#" -lt "2" ]; then
    echo "Usage:   `basename $0` timeout_in_seconds command" >&2
    echo "Example: `basename $0` 2 sleep 3 || echo timeout" >&2
    exit 1
fi

cleanup()
{
    trap - ALRM               #reset handler to default
    kill -ALRM $a 2>/dev/null #stop timer subshell if running
    kill $! 2>/dev/null &&    #kill last job
      exit 124                #exit with 124 if it was running
}

watchit()
{
    trap "cleanup" ALRM
    sleep $1& wait
    kill -ALRM $$
}

watchit $1& a=$!         #start the timeout
shift                    #first param was timeout for sleep
trap "cleanup" ALRM INT  #cleanup after timeout
"$@"& wait $!; RET=$?    #start the job wait for it and save its return value
kill -ALRM $a            #send ALRM signal to watchit
wait $a                  #wait for watchit to finish cleanup
exit $RET                #return the value

The following script shows how to do this using background tasks. The first section kills a 60-second process after the 10-second limit. The second attempts to kill a process that's already exited. Keep in mind that, if you set your timeout really high, the process IDs may roll over and you'll kill the wrong process but this is more of a theoretical issue - the timeout would have to be very large and you would have to be starting a lot of processes.

#!/usr/bin/bash

sleep 60 &
pid=$!
sleep 10
kill -9 $pid

sleep 3 &
pid=$!
sleep 10
kill -9 $pid

Here's the output on my Cygwin box:

$ ./limit10
./limit10: line 9:  4492 Killed sleep 60
./limit10: line 11: kill: (4560) - No such process

If you want to only wait until the process has finished, you need to enter a loop and check. This is slightly less accurate since sleep 1 and the other commands will actually take more than one second (but not much more). Use this script to replace the second section above (the "echo $proc" and "date" commands are for debugging, I wouldn't expect to have them in the final solution).

#!/usr/bin/bash

date
sleep 3 &
pid=$!
((lim = 10))
while [[ $lim -gt 0 ]] ; do
    sleep 1
    proc=$(ps -ef | awk -v pid=$pid '$2==pid{print}{}')
    echo $proc
    ((lim = lim - 1))
    if [[ -z "$proc" ]] ; then
            ((lim = -9))
    fi
done
date
if [[ $lim -gt -9 ]] ; then
    kill -9 $pid
fi
date

It basically loops, checking if the process is still running every second. If not, it exits the loop with a special value to not try and kill the child. Otherwise it times out and does kill the child.

Here's the output for a sleep 3:

Mon Feb  9 11:10:37 WADT 2009
pax 4268 2476 con 11:10:37 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4268 2476 con 11:10:37 /usr/bin/sleep
Mon Feb  9 11:10:41 WADT 2009
Mon Feb  9 11:10:41 WADT 2009

and a sleep 60:

Mon Feb  9 11:11:51 WADT 2009
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
pax 4176 2600 con 11:11:51 /usr/bin/sleep
Mon Feb  9 11:12:03 WADT 2009
Mon Feb  9 11:12:03 WADT 2009
./limit10: line 20:  4176 Killed sleep 60