Question

I am trying to start a service in Powershell. If the service does not start within a specified time limit, the attempt to start should be killed, otherwise it should carry on as usual. How do I incorporate a timeout?

Answer 1

Implementing a timeout is a really simple thing to do using background jobs:

$timeout = [Timespan]"0:0:15"
$start = Get-Date
$j = Start-Job -ScriptBLock { Import-Module MyModule; Invoke-MyCommand}
do {
    if ($j.JobState -ne 'Running') { break} 
    $j | Receive-Job
} while (((Get-Date) - $start) -le $timeout)

This block of code will timeout after 15 seconds, but it should get you started. Basically:
– Track the time
– Start a job
– Wait for it to be no longer running (it could have failed, so don’t just wait for completed)
– Receive Results while you wait
– Timeout if you’ve been waiting too long

Hope this Helps