how to make SSH command execution to timeout

Question

I have a program like this:

ssh -q harigm@8.19.71.238 exit
echo \"output value  -->$?\"

In the above code, I am trying to SSH to the remote

Answer 1

You could wrap the call to ssh using the timeout command. The timeout command exits with code 124 if a timeout occurs.

timeout 10s ssh -q harigm@8.19.71.238 exit
if [ $? -eq 124 ]; then
    echo "Timeout out"
fi

Or, as Vorsprung has commented on your question (as I was looking up the man page!):

ssh -oPasswordAuthentication=no -q harigm@8.19.71.238 exit

which will disallow interactive password authentication. You'd then have to check the exit code.