exec() with timeout

Question

I\'m looking for a way to run a PHP process with a timeout. Currently I\'m simply using exec(), but it does not provide a timeout option.

What I also tried is openin

Answer 1

Improving on other solutions I came up with this:

function exec_timeout($cmd,$timeout=60){
        $start=time();
        $outfile=uniqid('/tmp/out',1);
        $pid=trim(shell_exec("$cmd >$outfile 2>&1 & echo $!"));
        if(empty($pid)) return false;
        while(1){
                if(time()-$start>$timeout){
                        exec("kill -9 $pid",$null);
                        break;
                }
                $exists=trim(shell_exec("ps -p $pid -o pid="));
                if(empty($exists)) break;
                sleep(1);
        }
        $output=file_get_contents($outfile);
        unlink($outfile);
        return $output;
}