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I want know how I can run a command for a specified time say, one minute and if it doesn't complete execution then I should be able to stop it.

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Use timeout:

NAME
       timeout - run a command with a time limit

SYNOPSIS
       timeout [OPTION] DURATION COMMAND [ARG]...
       timeout [OPTION]

(Just in case, if you don't have this command or if you need to be compatible with very very old shells and have several other utterly specific requirements… have a look at this this question ;-))

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    Perfect, thanks for linking to that question. I didn't have timeout on my system but I do now. Just on a side note, is timeout bundled with the majority of linux distributions?
    – nikhil
    Oct 24, 2011 at 4:28
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    Pretty cool. you can do something like this: for i in `seq 0 3`; do timeout 2 ethtool -p eth$i; done; to blink LED's on NIC's
    – user1527227
    Jun 19, 2014 at 16:42
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    What a sexy command. Thanks for pointing it out, wasn't aware of it.
    – Bruno Bieri
    Mar 16, 2017 at 14:16
  • Example: timeout 5s vi will run the editor for 5 seconds and will send SIGTERM. You can use h and d for hours and days.
    – Vladimir Iashin
    Apr 23, 2020 at 8:02

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