Timeout Limit

CircleCI has a built-in 10 minute no-output timeout. This means that if it has been 10 minutes since the last output, the build will be canceled and stopped.

This can cause users to encounter issues where they intend for a part of their build to continue beyond 10 minutes without giving output, but the system kills the process/job.

Adjusting the timeout

The no_output_timeout parameter for run gives users the option to change the no-output timeout from the default 10 minutes to a user-specified timeout.

For example, if we have a run step as follows:

- run: 
    command: . ./ourlongscript.sh 

If we expect our script will take a while to complete execution, we can extend the no-output timeout as follows:

- run: 
    command: . ./ourlongscript.sh
    no_output_timeout: 30m

The value set for no_output_timeout can be in hours, minutes or seconds - a digit followed by h, m or s respectively. Partial times can also be used, like 1.5h. Please see the examples below:

no_output_timeout: 30s
no_output_timeout: 30m
no_output_timeout: 3h
no_output_timeout: 1.5h

Additional Notes:

• There are cases when a job may run for longer than the timeout limit (a common case being test runners not exiting).
• This will not override your build time limits enforced by your organization's plan.

Additional Resources:

• Context deadline exceeded after 1 hour - Build timed out (Free tier only)
• Automatically cancel build after set amount of time