UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I am looking for a way to timeout a ftp script in pre Solaris 2.8 (i.e. I cannot use the -T option to ftp).

Does anyone have a way of doing this? I was thinking maybe a subprocess and sleep command?

I tried the search and could not find anything.

Thanks,
Kevin

Nevermind, I found an answer. I do this:

# run ftp as a backgrond process and test the return value
ftp -n $HOST -T $CHILDTIME <<-[]>> $LOG 2>&1 &
user "$USER" "$PASSWORD"
prompt
verbose
bin
cd "$TODIR"
put "$FILE"
quit
[]

# get pid for timeout
ftppid=$!
(
(
sleep $CHILDTIME &
echo $!
wait $! && kill -9 $ftppid
)2>/dev/null &
) | read killerPID

# wait for background process to complete
wait

# kill background process
kill $killerPID