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

A simple way I've always done timeouts with 2.7 is utilizing subprocess.poll() alongside time.sleep() with a delay. Here's a very basic example:

import subprocess
import time

x = #some amount of seconds
delay = 1.0
timeout = int(x / delay)

args = #a string or array of arguments
task = subprocess.Popen(args)

#while the process is still executing and we haven't timed-out yet
while task.poll() is None and timeout > 0:
     #do other things too if necessary e.g. print, check resources, etc.
     time.sleep(delay)
     timeout -= delay

If you set x = 600, then your timeout would amount to 10 minutes. While task.poll() will query whether or not the process has terminated. time.sleep(delay) will sleep for 1 second in this case, and then decrement the timeout by 1 second. You can play around with that part to your heart's content, but the basic concept is the same throughout.

Hope this helps!

subprocess.poll() https://docs.python.org/2/library/subprocess.html#popen-objects