ruby timeouts and system commands

Question

I have a ruby timeout that calls a system (bash) command like this..

Timeout::timeout(10) {
  `my_bash_command -c12 -o text.txt`
}

but I th

Answer 1

Perhaps this will help someone else looking to achieve similar timeout functionality, but needs to collect the output from the shell command.

I've adapted @shurikk's method to work with Ruby 2.0 and some code from Fork child process with timeout and capture output to collect the output.

def exec_with_timeout(cmd, timeout)
  begin
    # stdout, stderr pipes
    rout, wout = IO.pipe
    rerr, werr = IO.pipe
    stdout, stderr = nil

    pid = Process.spawn(cmd, pgroup: true, :out => wout, :err => werr)

    Timeout.timeout(timeout) do
      Process.waitpid(pid)

      # close write ends so we can read from them
      wout.close
      werr.close

      stdout = rout.readlines.join
      stderr = rerr.readlines.join
    end

  rescue Timeout::Error
    Process.kill(-9, pid)
    Process.detach(pid)
  ensure
    wout.close unless wout.closed?
    werr.close unless werr.closed?
    # dispose the read ends of the pipes
    rout.close
    rerr.close
  end
  stdout
 end