Killing ssh client processes on timeouts is usually not a great idea as it will often leave orphan processes running on the remote host.

Anyway, maybe, that will do what you want...

use Net::OpenSSH '0.51_01';

my $ssh = Net::OpenSSH->new($ipaddress,
                            user => 'pason', passwd => 'perlassasin27'
+,
                            timeout => $timeout,
                            kill_ssh_on_timeout => 1);

my @lines = $ssh->capture({stderr_to_stdout => 1},
                          scp => 'root@comp2:/tmp/10mbfile', '/tmp');

if (my $error = $ssh->error) {
    print $logfh, "scp command failed: $error\n";
}
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