How to timeout with exit(0) from Bash

No need to use sleep you can change your command in the following way to force the return code at 0:

(timeout 20s <binary>; exit 0) 

Example:

(timeout 2s '/bin/sleep' 100; exit 0) #subshell creation                                                                                        
echo $?
0

vs

timeout 2s '/bin/sleep' 100
echo $?
124

In case you want to:

• Return Exit code 0:

  • If command completed successfully (code 0).
  • OR if command did not complete yet (code 124), but that's OK too.

• Return Exit code 1:

  • If command had a failure before timeout reached.

Then try this:

timeout 10m some_command || ( [[ $? -eq 124 ]] && \
echo "WARNING: Timeout reached, but that's OK" )