Bug#489741: netpipes: timelimit shall die when impossible to run the command

[Olivier Macchioni <mac@dax.tuxfinder.com>]

Package: netpipes
Version: 4.2-3
Severity: normal


Use case:

mac@margarita:~$ touch /tmp/a
mac@margarita:~$ timelimit 10 /tmp/a
timelimit: Unable to exec /tmp/a (Permission denied)

Here timelimit hangs forever... although the primary usage of timelimit
is specifically to stop the command after a given time.

So... when run from a crontab, the user ends up with thousands of
"timelimit" processes running, all <defunct>.

When the command is not executable, timelimit shall:
1) (preferred) just die or
2) die after <time> seconds

Mac

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18.1dedibox_r6_final
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages netpipes depends on:
ii  libc6                  2.3.6.ds1-13etch5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries

netpipes recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information