How to make a subprocess.call timeout using python 2.7.6?

Question

This has probably been asked but I cannot find anything regarding a subprocess.call timeout when using python 2.7

Answer 1

You can use subprocess32 mentioned by @gps, which is backport of the subprocess standard library module from Python 3.2 - 3.5 for use on Python 2.

Firstly, install the subprocess32 module:

pip install subprocess32

Here's a code snippet:

>>> import subprocess32
>>> print subprocess32.check_output(["python", "--version"])
Python 2.7.12

>>> subprocess32.check_output(["sleep", "infinity"], timeout=3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/subprocess32.py", line 340, in check_output
    raise TimeoutExpired(process.args, timeout, output=output)
subprocess32.TimeoutExpired: Command '['sleep', 'infinity']' timed out after 3 seconds

Notice, default timeout=None, which means never timeout.