Re: Kill process after X mins

In Proc::Watchdog, I read:

A separate daemon (watchd) included along with this module, is called from cron or another similar service to check on the path.

So, does watchd run on your system and does it work? Also, does it have the appropriate permissions to kill the process(es) you run?

The three simpler approaches would be:

Configure your webserver to kill processes after a certain time
Use alarm to make your program commit suicide
Look at what ulimits your OS supports and maybe limit CPU or wallclock time for your processes

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Re^2: Kill process after X mins by pradeepprakhar (Initiate) on Apr 20, 2017 at 15:31 UTC
Can you please let me know how can we start the 'watchd' daemon on Linux machine. -Pradeep	[reply]
Re^3: Kill process after X mins by Corion (Patriarch) on Apr 20, 2017 at 15:34 UTC
Have you read the documentation of Proc::Watchdog? If you are asking about the included `watchd` daemon only, use whaterver system service management tool your Linux vendor supports. This is mostly a system administration question and I know little of Linux system administration.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Kill process after X mins by pradeepprakhar (Initiate) on Apr 20, 2017 at 16:14 UTC
I had gone through the Watchdog documentation earlier and now but it is still not clear for me that where can I start the watchd daemon in Linux. As per document "daemon" is a Linux OS term which is equivalent to Windows OS services.	[reply]
Re^5: Kill process after X mins by Corion (Patriarch) on Apr 20, 2017 at 16:31 UTC
Re^2: Kill process after X mins by Anonymous Monk on Jul 21, 2011 at 13:15 UTC
Many thanks, Corion! alarm does exactly what I was looking for. Does it also work if the process hung? In my case, it's a "while" loop and it was killed at the specified time. I'm using a shared server and don't have control over (1) and (3).	[reply]
Re^3: Kill process after X mins by Corion (Patriarch) on Jul 21, 2011 at 13:21 UTC
alarm is likely a feature supplied by your operating system, so whether alarm works for a "hung" process really depends on your operating system and what you consider "hung". On unixish operating systems, SIGALRM will interrupt almost any (system) call. Most recent versions of Perl will likely only process signals after system calls have returned ("safe signals"). If your program gets "hung" in an endless loop, the SIGALRM handler will stop your program. If your program gets "hung" in some system call, it will not necessarily get immediately stopped. Personally, I question the wisdom of the person administrating the "shared server" without hard ulimits and hard maximum request limits, but maybe they have reasons for not limiting the resources users can consume.	[reply]