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From: "Branden R. Williams" via GNU coreutils Bug Reports <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>
To: 70219@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#70219: Bug/Issue with timeout and signals
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2024 10:19:39 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <ADBC15C8-7D3B-464D-9253-79EEF4091A3F@brandenwilliams.com> (raw)

I was integrating the timeout command into a shell script and realized the manpage & the --help docs do not accurately describe how the tool works. In addition, there appears to be a bug related to arguments passed. I am running version 9.1.

According to the help screen, this command should work:

	timeout -k 10s ping example.com <http://example.com/>

It fails, however, because the next argument after invoking -k is the kill signal you want to send. The command (to send a SIGKILL) must be:

	timeout -k 9 10s ping example.com <http://example.com/>

I believe the kill after functionality and docs should be modified to send a default signal of SIGTERM without an additional argument so the first iteration above would work. Then you could explain that if you wanted to send a DIFFERENT signal, use the -s flag that is there to pass one. But according to the docs, the first command SHOULD work. Even using the --kill-after= syntax passes in the kill signal into that argument, not the actual time.

Thank you for your consideration and for maintaining such a critical set of tools! 

Regards,

B


             reply	other threads:[~2024-04-05 18:01 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2024-04-05 15:19 Branden R. Williams via GNU coreutils Bug Reports [this message]
2024-04-05 21:59 ` bug#70219: Bug/Issue with timeout and signals Chris Elvidge
2024-04-05 22:14   ` Branden R. Williams via GNU coreutils Bug Reports
2024-04-06  9:06     ` Andreas Schwab
2024-04-06 12:43       ` Branden R. Williams via GNU coreutils Bug Reports
2024-04-06 14:44         ` Chris Elvidge
2024-04-06 15:50           ` Branden R. Williams via GNU coreutils Bug Reports
2024-04-06 18:30             ` Pádraig Brady

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