Bash: wait with timeout

Question

In a Bash script, I would like to do something like:

app1 &
pidApp1=$!
app2 &
pidApp2=$1

timeout 60 wait $pidApp1 $pidApp2
kill -9 $pidApp1 $pidApp2         


        

Answer 1

Here's a simplified version of Aaron Digulla's answer, which uses the kill -0 trick that Aaron Digulla leaves in a comment:

app &
pidApp=$!
( sleep 60 ; echo 'timeout'; kill $pidApp ) &
killerPid=$!

wait $pidApp
kill -0 $killerPid && kill $killerPid

In my case, I wanted to be both set -e -x safe and return the status code, so I used:

set -e -x
app &
pidApp=$!
( sleep 45 ; echo 'timeout'; kill $pidApp ) &
killerPid=$!

wait $pidApp
status=$?
(kill -0 $killerPid && kill $killerPid) || true

exit $status

An exit status of 143 indicates SIGTERM, almost certainly from our timeout.