I think of this as a "watchdog", although it doesn't check if the child is actually responsive or not. That would be application specific but this is a general purpose tool.

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use version qw( qv ); our $VERSION = qv('1.0.0'); use Errno qw( EINTR ); use File::Basename qw( basename ); use Getopt::Long qw( ); # --- # Populated by process_args from values from the command line. my $prog; my $opt_timeout; my $opt_grace; my $opt_quiet; my $cmd; my @args; sub show_help { print("$prog $VERSION (Perl $])\n"); print <<'__EOI__'; usage: $prog [<options>] [--] <command> [<args>] $prog [ -h | --help | -v | --version ] Options: -t, --timeout=<timeout> Terminate after this many seconds. [requ +ired] -g, --grace=<timeout> Allow this many secondss to terminate. [defa +ult=20] -q, --quiet Silence informational messages. -v. --version Show version info. -h, --help Show usage informaion. __EOI__ exit( 0 ); } sub show_version { print("$prog $VERSION (Perl $])\n"); exit( 0 ); } sub show_usage { my ( $msg ) = @_; warn( $msg ) if defined $msg; warn("\"$prog --help\" for usage help.\n"); exit( 1 ); } sub process_args { $prog = basename($0); local *make_validator = sub { my ( $opt_var, $seen_var, $validator ) = @_; return sub { my ( $opt, $val ) = @_; warn( "Option $opt already specified\n" ) if $seen_var && $$seen_var++; die( "Invalid value for option $opt\n" ) if $validator && !$validator->( $val ); $$opt_var = $val; }; }; $opt_timeout = undef; $opt_grace = 20; my $seen_t; my $seen_g; Getopt::Long::Configure(qw( posix_default )); Getopt::Long::GetOptions( 'help|h|?' => \&show_help, 'version|v' => \&show_version, 'timeout|t=i' => make_validator( \$opt_timeout, \$seen_t, sub { +$_[0] =~ /^\d+\z/ && $_[0] > 0 } ), 'grace|g=i' => make_validator( \$opt_grace, \$seen_g, sub { +$_[0] =~ /^\d+\z/ } ), 'quiet|q' => \$opt_quiet, ) or show_usage(); show_usage( "Timeout must be specified\n") if !$seen_t; show_usage( "Too few arguments\n" ) if @ARGV < 1; ($cmd, @args) = @ARGV; } # --- # Uninterruptable sleep sub deep_sleep { my ($period) = @_; my $end = time() + $period; for (;;) { return 1 if $period <= 0; return 1 if sleep($period); return 0 if $! != EINTR; $period = $end - time(); } } { process_args(); $SIG{CHLD} = sub { wait(); # Grab status and clean up zombie exit( ($? & 127) ? 1 : ($? >> 8) ); }; defined( my $pid = fork() ) or die("$prog: fork: $!\n"); if (!$pid) { # Child exec { $cmd } $cmd, @args or die("$prog: exec: $!\n"); } deep_sleep($opt_timeout); if ($opt_grace) { warn("$prog: Termination requested\n") if !$opt_quiet; kill(TERM => $pid); deep_sleep($opt_grace); } warn("$prog: Termination forced\n") if !$opt_quiet; kill(KILL => $pid); $SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE'; exit(1); }

Usage examples:

watchdog -t 7200 perl -le'print("done")'
# Gets terminated watchdog -t 7200 perl -le'sleep(3*60*60); print("done")'
# Gets killed watchdog -t 7200 perl -le'$SIG{TERM}="IGNORE"; sleep(10800); print("do +ne")'

Bugs and Limitations: