Setting time limit for script to run

[rahijain]

hi,
hi, i need a command in shell which can set the time limit for a script to run. meaning if i need to run a script in loop for two hours how can i do it? Actually for details it is a script to take data from tcpdump and put them into mysql. so i need time factor to set the running time for tcpdump.

[Franklin52]

Something like this (10 dumps in 2 hours):

for i in $(seq 10)
do
  # dump
  sleep 12
done

I don't know how long it takes to make a dump, but you can vary the values of the seq and sleep commands.

Regards