I have a script that times itself out after an hour using alarm. It worked last week and now is not working. Now, alarm is raised immediately ignoring whatever timeout (seconds) I set. I haven't really changed much in the script, and haven't changed anything in the eval block (below). What could be causing it to "alarm" immediately? It times out in less than a second according to the timestamps.

If there is an error in the main() block will it raise an alarm during execution? Is there a better way to see where the script was when the alarm was raised?

I've also included the entire script on my scratch pad, just in case. Thanks for any help! I'm using Perl 5.8.4 on Solaris 5.1 (and I cannot change system Perl or add my own, unfortunately).

my scratchpad 
my @output;
eval
{
    # Get the timeout value from the properties file
    $properties_file = $properties_directory."/".$properties_file;
    %values_hash = load_properties($properties_file);
    $script_timeout = $values_hash{'script.timeout'};
    
    # Prepare the lockfile
    my $lock_file_directory = "";
    $lock_file = "emc_backups.lck";
    $lock_file_directory = abs_path($0);
    $lock_file_directory =~ s/(.*)\/.*/$1/;
    $lock_file = $lock_file_directory."/".$lock_file;
    
    # Start logging
    my $log = $values_hash{'logfile'};
    startLog($log);

    # If script is already running, then exit. If not, create a lock f
+ile.
    verify_lockfile($lock_file, $script_timeout);

    # Kill the script if it runs longer than the timeout value (in sec
+onds)
    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "Timeout\n" };
    alarm $script_timeout;
    @output = main();
    alarm 0;
};

if ($@)
{
    # Script timed out
        
    # Delete aborted copy, if any
    if ($currentBackupCopying) {
        purge_backups($currentBackupCopying);
    }

    print LOGFILE "ERROR: Backup timed out - ".localtime()."\n";

    # Delete Lock File
    unlink($lock_file);
}
else 
{
    # Script ran successfully
    print LOGFILE "Backup finished - ".localtime()."\n";

    # Delete Lock File
    unlink($lock_file);
}

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In reply to Alarm firing immediately instead of waiting for timeout by gator2003

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