bug#51135: timeout: --foreground causes exit status 124, even if KILL was used

[Pádraig Brady]

On 12/10/2021 02:55, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> Thinking again about this:
>
> Don't you think one looses quite something if, with --foreground, one
> cannot differ (via the exit status) between a timeout that allowed the
> program to clean up and one (when KILLing) that didn't?
>
>
> Even if the KILL happens via killing timeout itself, couldn't it just
> return 128+9 in the case --foreground was enabled and the original
> signal had already been sent?
> Or is that technically not possible then?

That is a fair point.
If one is using --kill-after you have to
check for both 124 and 137 anyway to see if it timed out.
It is useful to know whether the command was forcably killed.
Using --foreground to avoid the 137 exit status upon --kill-after
is not until now documented, so we should probably adjust
the exit status to be always 137 if a SIGKILL is sent.

With the attached we now behave like:

  $ timeout -v -s0 --foreground -k2 1 sleep 3; echo $?
  timeout: sending signal EXIT to command ‘sleep’
  timeout: sending signal KILL to command ‘sleep’
  137

  $ timeout -v -s0 -k2 1 sleep 3; echo $?
  timeout: sending signal EXIT to command ‘sleep’
  timeout: sending signal KILL to command ‘sleep’
  Killed
  137

cheers,
Pádraig

timeout--foreground-k-status.patch
Description: Text Data