I have a script that runs a command and if the command hasn't finished within 10 seconds it send an SNMP trap to our moniotring server. The issue that I amn running into is the command continues to run after the snmp trap has been sent and I want to command to die. I put an example of the script below. The command I have it running will wait for a password to be entered so I know that it will time out, which it does. However, after it times prints the "Command Has timed out" and returns to a prompt if you try and type you get an I/O error that shows that the command was still running. I'm a newb to Perl so any help would be greatly appreciated. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
local $SIG {ALRM} = sub {die "alarm"};

eval {
    alarm (2);
    system "$vmdiscover --server esx3-1.erp.ufl.edu --managedentity ho
+st --entityname esx3-1.erp.ufl.edu ";
    alarm (0);
};
if ($@ && $@ =~ /^alarm/) {
    print "Command has timed out";
}

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In reply to Kill a command launched within script by ceweldon

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