Package: pbuilder Version: 0.223 Hi,
When using --timeout option of pbuilder and piping output to e.g. cat, pbuilder will hang until timeout expires (instead of terminating once build is done): $ sudo pbuilder build --timeout 1h lua5.2_5.2.4-1ubuntu1.dsc 2>&1 | cat ... I: Copying back the cached apt archive contents I: unmounting dev/pts filesystem I: unmounting run/shm filesystem I: unmounting proc filesystem I: cleaning the build env I: removing directory /var/cache/pbuilder/build/5322 and its subdirectories I: Current time: Fri Feb 24 06:57:25 GMT 2017 I: pbuilder-time-stamp: 1487919445 # <-- Hangs for 1 hour It seems that the issue is in /usr/lib/pbuilder/pbuilder-buildpackage : if [ -n "${TIMEOUT_TIME}" ]; then ( : Timeout process sleep "${TIMEOUT_TIME}" log.i "Terminating build process due to timeout " kill "${BUILD_PID}" || true ) & # timeout process KILL_WAIT_PID="kill $! || true; echo \"I: Terminate timeout process\"; " ... eval "${KILL_WAIT_PID}" Note that KILL_WAIT_PID will kill the parent shell but keep sleep running. Sleep child process will become a zombie and keep writing to pipe which will _probably_ prevent it from being reaped by the kernel. A simple fix which worked for me is to redirect sleep's output to /dev/null (both stdout and stderr need to be redirected): sleep "${TIMEOUT_TIME}" &> /dev/null As far as I can see, the issue is still present in latest pbuilder. -Iurii