Processes with timeout

[Markus Franz]

Hi.



My little Python script creates some child-processes depending on how much
command line options were given:



for myvalue in sys.argv[1:]:

    pid = os.fork()

    if pid == 0:
        do_something()  # placeholder for operations

        break

Now I do some difficult things inside each child process (above: function
do_something). These operations may take a long time.



How can I make it sure that every child-process terminates after x senconds
(wether it has finished or not)?
I don't know how to force a child-process to kill itself after x seconds. I
also don't know how to force a main process (parent) to kill a child-process
after x seconds.

I searched for something like:



for myvalue in sys.argv[1:]:

    pid = os.fork()

    if pid == 0:
        os.exit(timeout)

        do_something()  # placeholder for operations

        break

But there was nothing like this... Do you have an answer to my question???
Thank you.



Best regards



Markus Franz