Waitpid equivalent with timeout?

Fork an intermediate child, which forks the real child and a timeout process and waits for all (both) of its children. When one exits, it'll kill the other one and exit.

pid_t intermediate_pid = fork();
if (intermediate_pid == 0) {
    pid_t worker_pid = fork();
    if (worker_pid == 0) {
        do_work();
        _exit(0);
    }

    pid_t timeout_pid = fork();
    if (timeout_pid == 0) {
        sleep(timeout_time);
        _exit(0);
    }

    pid_t exited_pid = wait(NULL);
    if (exited_pid == worker_pid) {
        kill(timeout_pid, SIGKILL);
    } else {
        kill(worker_pid, SIGKILL); // Or something less violent if you prefer
    }
    wait(NULL); // Collect the other process
    _exit(0); // Or some more informative status
}
waitpid(intermediate_pid, 0, 0);

Surprisingly simple :)

You can even leave out the intermediate child if you're sure no other module in the program is spwaning child processes of its own.

Don't mix alarm() with wait(). You can lose error information that way.

Use the self-pipe trick. This turns any signal into a select()able event:

int selfpipe[2];
void selfpipe_sigh(int n)
{
    int save_errno = errno;
    (void)write(selfpipe[1], "",1);
    errno = save_errno;
}
void selfpipe_setup(void)
{
    static struct sigaction act;
    if (pipe(selfpipe) == -1) { abort(); }

    fcntl(selfpipe[0],F_SETFL,fcntl(selfpipe[0],F_GETFL)|O_NONBLOCK);
    fcntl(selfpipe[1],F_SETFL,fcntl(selfpipe[1],F_GETFL)|O_NONBLOCK);
    memset(&act, 0, sizeof(act));
    act.sa_handler = selfpipe_sigh;
    sigaction(SIGCHLD, &act, NULL);
}

Then, your waitpid-like function looks like this:

int selfpipe_waitpid(void)
{
    static char dummy[4096];
    fd_set rfds;
    struct timeval tv;
    int died = 0, st;

    tv.tv_sec = 5;
    tv.tv_usec = 0;
    FD_ZERO(&rfds);
    FD_SET(selfpipe[0], &rfds);
    if (select(selfpipe[0]+1, &rfds, NULL, NULL, &tv) > 0) {
       while (read(selfpipe[0],dummy,sizeof(dummy)) > 0);
       while (waitpid(-1, &st, WNOHANG) != -1) died++;
    }
    return died;
}

You can see in selfpipe_waitpid() how you can control the timeout and even mix with other select()-based IO.

This is an interesting question. I found sigtimedwait can do it.

EDIT 2016/08/29: Thanks for Mark Edington's suggestion. I'v tested your example on Ubuntu 16.04, it works as expected.

Note: this only works for child processes. It's a pity that seems no equivalent way of Window's WaitForSingleObject(unrelated_process_handle, timeout) in Linux/Unix to get notified of unrelated process's termination within timeout.

OK, Mark Edington's sample code is here:

/* The program creates a child process and waits for it to finish. If a timeout
 * elapses the child is killed. Waiting is done using sigtimedwait(). Race
 * condition is avoided by blocking the SIGCHLD signal before fork().
 */
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>

static pid_t fork_child (void)
{
    int p = fork ();

    if (p == -1) {
        perror ("fork");
        exit (1);
    }

    if (p == 0) {
        puts ("child: sleeping...");
        sleep (10);
        puts ("child: exiting");
        exit (0);
    }

    return p;
}

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    sigset_t mask;
    sigset_t orig_mask;
    struct timespec timeout;
    pid_t pid;

    sigemptyset (&mask);
    sigaddset (&mask, SIGCHLD);

    if (sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &mask, &orig_mask) < 0) {
        perror ("sigprocmask");
        return 1;
    }

    pid = fork_child ();

    timeout.tv_sec = 5;
    timeout.tv_nsec = 0;

    do {
        if (sigtimedwait(&mask, NULL, &timeout) < 0) {
            if (errno == EINTR) {
                /* Interrupted by a signal other than SIGCHLD. */
                continue;
            }
            else if (errno == EAGAIN) {
                printf ("Timeout, killing child\n");
                kill (pid, SIGKILL);
            }
            else {
                perror ("sigtimedwait");
                return 1;
            }
        }

        break;
    } while (1);

    if (waitpid(pid, NULL, 0) < 0) {
        perror ("waitpid");
        return 1;
    }

    return 0;
}