Perl problem to add timeout for external calls on Win32

[webotronics]

Hi,

I need to add a timeout for external programs, as the external program sometimes never dies (it's a ClearQuest multisite call to the shipping server, that sometimes never ends, but simply hangs).

I have three different ways of forking the call, but none works. I send the one I believe most in...

use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
my $loop      = 1;
$loop           = $ARGV[0] if defined $ARGV[0];
my $timeout = 10;
my $child     = fork();
unless ( $child )  {
    # Child
    exec( "perl count.pl $loop" );
    exit 0;
}
 
sleep( $timeout );
my $kid = waitpid( $child, WNOHANG );
if( $kid != -1 )  {
    print "The child is still running! Kill the process: $child...\n";
    kill( 9, $child );
}
else  {  print "no timeout\n";  }
 
 

The external program count.pl, is simply a program that prints an iterator every second:

my $loop     = 1;
my $iterator = 1;
$loop          = $ARGV[0] if defined $ARGV[0];
for( ; $iterator <= $loop ; $iterator++ )  {
   sleep( 1 );
   print "$iterator($$)...\n";
}
 
 

The idea is fine. After ten seconds, the mother process detects that the child process is still running, and tries to kill it.

And here is the strange thing!!!

The $child value (returned from the fork() command), is not the same as the $$ in the child process!!!

That means that the kill command is trying to kill another process (which in this case doesn't exist).

If I open another command tool window, and type in: perl -e "kill( 9, <child pid> )"
the child is killed.

Am I doing something wrong?

I tried also:

 local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" };       # NB \n required
    alarm 10;
    $child_pid = fork();
    if( $child_pid )  {
    print "Child_pid = $child_pid\n";
        $pid2 = waitpid( $child_pid, 0 );
    }
    elsif( $child_pid == 0 )  {
    print "child pid= $$\n";
        exec( "ratlperl count.pl $x" );
    exit( 0 );
    }
 

I do get an alarm signal after the timeout, but I don't have the correct pid here also. kill() doesn't work.

Any help would be appreciated very much.

Cheers,
/Richard

[numberwhun]

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