Windows shell timeout/cancellation can orphan descendants; timeout appeared sensitive to a wall-clock step

[ecuthiell]

What version of Codex CLI is running?

codex-cli 0.144.6

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.6-sol ultra

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Windows Terminal using PowerShell

Codex doctor report

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}

What issue are you seeing?

Windows shell timeout/cancellation can orphan descendants; timeout appeared sensitive to a wall-clock step

Environment:

• Codex app shell path: functions.exec -> tools.shell_command
• Windows NT 10.0.26200.0
• PowerShell 7.6.3
• Current installed CLI reports codex-cli 0.144.6; please use the attached session logs as the authoritative build identity for the July 24-25 executions.

Observed behavior:

1. On 2026-07-24, Windows time synchronization stepped the workstation clock forward by approximately 9h50m while a long-running test command was active. The shell tool returned exit 124 before the requested monotonic elapsed duration had passed. This appears consistent with wall-clock deadline accounting rather than a monotonic timeout.
2. Independently, on 2026-07-25, stopping a running exec cell terminated its PowerShell wrapper but not its descendants. TestWorkspace.Cli PID 72412 and its guardian PID 58588 remained alive; the run continued and held build outputs. Stopping only PID 72412 later allowed the guardian to drain its owned Job.

Minimal cancellation repro:

$pidPath = Join-Path $env:TEMP 'codex-orphan-child.pid'
Remove-Item -LiteralPath $pidPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$child = Start-Process pwsh -PassThru -ArgumentList @(
    '-NoProfile',
    '-Command',
    'Start-Sleep -Seconds 300'
)
$child.Id | Set-Content -LiteralPath $pidPath
$child.WaitForExit()

Run that through the shell tool with a long timeout, then stop the Codex tool call after the PID file appears. Check afterward:

$childPid = [int](Get-Content -LiteralPath (
    Join-Path $env:TEMP 'codex-orphan-child.pid'))
Get-Process -Id $childPid

Expected: timeout, cancellation, or caller loss terminates the entire owned process tree and the tool returns only after bounded quiescence and output drain. Timeout duration should use a monotonic elapsed-time source.

Actual: the wrapper can terminate and return while descendants continue running. The clock-step incident also produced a premature timeout.

Requested behavior:

• Use a monotonic deadline for timeout accounting.
• Assign the command to a platform process group/Windows Job before its first instruction.
• On timeout, cancellation, or caller loss, terminate the entire owned tree and boundedly wait for zero remaining processes and drained pipes.
• Distinguish confirmed cleanup from unconfirmed cleanup in the terminal result; do not report an ordinary timeout if descendant cleanup is uncertain.
• If detached execution is intentional, expose it explicitly with a durable receipt and reattachment/termination contract rather than silently orphaning the process.

Local mitigation, not a Codex fix:

Our repository now routes authoritative long-running commands through a C# process run wrapper. On Windows it creates the target suspended inside an unnamed kill-on-close Job, gives an independent guardian exact Job/controller/caller-ancestry handles before resuming it, uses a relative timer and Stopwatch timestamps, and waits for Job quiescence on timeout, cancellation, controller death, or outer-caller loss. It reports 124/130 only after confirmed cleanup and 125 when cleanup cannot be confirmed. This protects only commands explicitly routed through this repository-specific wrapper; ordinary Codex shell calls remain exposed.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Uploaded thread: 019f6d87-f13a-7492-9cd5-fcdc218ee012

What is the expected behavior?

See above

Additional information

No response

[github-actions]

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• Windows Desktop: shell tool timeout does not release agent when a headless Chrome child survives #35193
• Windows unelevated sandbox blocks child_process spawn (EPERM) - next dev/build and esbuild unusable; orphaned process trees after tool timeout #35070

Powered by Codex Action

[ecuthiell]

I reviewed #35193 and #35070, as well as the earlier #33913 they reference. The surviving-descendant/process-tree portion of this report substantially overlaps #33913/#35193.

The separate observation here—a timeout firing early immediately after the Windows wall clock advanced by approximately 9h50m—does not appear to be covered there and points to deadline accounting that should use a monotonic elapsed-time source. I’m leaving this issue open for that distinct aspect; I’m happy to split the clock-step report into its own issue if maintainers prefer.

[dandanaher]

Independent Windows 10 reproduction with a severe system-wide consequence.

Environment

• Windows 10 22H2 (build 19045), 32 GB RAM
• VS Code with OpenAI ChatGPT/Codex extension 26.727.40816-win32-x64
• codex-command-runner-0.146.0-alpha.9.2.exe
• Node.js 22.14.0

What happened

Several generic node --test ... / npm test commands timed out or were interrupted during an IDE Codex session. Their parent command processes exited, but child Node test workers survived and were reparented. The workers continued running for roughly an hour until Windows exhausted system commit.

Windows Resource-Exhaustion-Detector Event 2004 listed three orphaned node.exe workers at approximately 30.39 GB, 29.82 GB, and 29.68 GB of virtual size while commit was exhausted. Follow-on failures included:

• Git: fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed
• go/TypeScript tooling: VirtualAlloc ... errno=1455, then fatal OOM
• command runner exit status 0xC000012D
• VS Code renderer termination: reason oom, code -536870904
• two dwm.exe crashes followed by a LiveKernelEvent 193 watchdog event
• both displays went black and the machine required a forced shutdown

After reboot, the orphaned workers were gone and memory returned to normal.

The child workload did contain a runaway Windows filesystem-watch event loop, but that should have remained contained to the timed-out command. The Codex lifecycle failure was that descendants survived after the command parent and continued consuming resources outside the command/session boundary.

Expected containment

On timeout, cancellation, session termination, or command-runner exit, Codex should terminate the complete descendant process tree. A Windows Job Object with kill-on-close semantics would provide a hard lifecycle boundary even when the child workload is faulty.

No session transcript, repository identity, local paths, prompts, or source code are included in this report.