Gnu – Timeout

This is one of those extremely useful commands that not many people know. Basically runs a shell command and exits when the time runs out. The format is as follows:

timeout [OPTION] DURATION COMMAND [ARG]…

Lets see an example:

• timeout 10s top : This starts the top utility waits for 10 seconds and quit. Simple. The sufixes are:
  • s for second
  • m for minutes
  • h for hours
  • d for days

As always, check the man page for more details and info.