[Rd] system(timeout=) may timeout with 0 exit code

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 5/14/20 8:34 PM, Jan Gorecki wrote:
> Hi R developers,
>
> I observed that system(timeout=) may still return exit code 0, when
> killing the process due to timeout.
>
> In src/unix/sys-unix.c there is
>
> #define KILL_SIGNAL1 SIGINT
> #define KILL_SIGNAL2 SIGTERM
> #define KILL_SIGNAL3 SIGKILL
> #define EMERGENCY_TIMEOUT 20
>
> After little bit of debugging I observed that total time of system
> call is provided timeout value + 20s. That means EMERGENCY_TIMEOUT 20
> kicked in, adding 20 seconds.
>
> I don't have a reproducible example, but following code, and output
> file below should be enough to ensure that there is a problem there
> (exit code 0 despite timeout).

Thanks for the report, but I can't tell from the report what the problem 
is, I would really need a reproducible example, and ideally one that 
uses only minimal/trivial child processes. I tried with such examples on 
my system, but they did not trigger the problem.

In this example, SIGINT succeeds in terminating the child process

 > system.time(print(system("while /bin/true ; do /bin/true ; done", 
timeout=1)))
[1] 124
    user  system elapsed
   0.712   0.316   1.002

In this example, SIGTERM succeeds (after additional 20s)

 > system.time(print(system("trap '' INT ; while /bin/true ; do 
/bin/true ; done", timeout=1)))
[1] 124
    user  system elapsed
  14.813   6.641  21.002

In this example, SIGKILL succeeds (after additional 40s)

 > system.time(print(system("trap '' INT TERM ; while /bin/true ; do 
/bin/true ; done", timeout=1)))
[1] 124
    user  system elapsed
  29.075  12.918  41.002

In these examples, the execution time and the exit status is as 
documented in ?system.

Best
Tomas

>
> warn = NULL
> p = proc.time()[[3L]]
> tryCatch(
>    ret <- system(cmd, timeout=timeout_s),
>    warning = function(w) {
>      warn <<- w[["message"]]
>    }
> )
> if (length(warn) && ret==0L)
>    cat(sprintf("command '%s' timed out(?) but still exited with 0 code,
> timeout %ss, took %ss, warning '%s'\n",
>                cmd, timeout_s, proc.time()[[3L]]-p, warn),
> file="timeout-exit-codes.out", append=TRUE)
>
> And the content of timeout-exit-codes.out:
>
> command '/bin/bash -c "./_launcher/solution.R > log.out 2> log.err"'
> timed out(?) but still exited with 0 code, timeout 7200s, took
> 7220.005s, warning '/bin/bash -c "./_launcher/solution.R > log.out 2>
> log.err"' timed out after 7200s'
>
> Thank you,
> Jan Gorecki
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel