Error running remote compact task: timeout waiting for child process to exit
Resolved 💬 9 comments Opened Jan 22, 2026 by adogwangwang Closed Feb 9, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of Codex is running?
0.87
What subscription do you have?
plus
Which model were you using?
gpt5.2-codex
What platform is your computer?
linux ubuntu x86
What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?
cursor
What issue are you seeing?
I am doing my project with codex till 18% context left , it comes error with 'Error running remote compact task: timeout waiting for child process to exit' and can't go on work , so sad !
What steps can reproduce the bug?
just use
What is the expected behavior?
_No response_
Additional information
_No response_
9 Comments
If you're able to reproduce the problem, please use the
/feedbackslash command to upload your logs and session details, and post the thread ID below.https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/9666#issuecomment-3783095898
thread ID 019bda5c-f734-7fd2-82fe-e4056c2bbefb
Thanks for the logs. It looks like the compaction operation took too long, so the client's timeout was triggered.
Have you seen this more than once, or was this a one-time occurrence?
This issue keeps occurring: when there is very little context remaining, the context cannot be compressed, preventing the main task from continuing. It's very frustrating.
@etraut-openai This looks like the same compaction-timeout failure as #9211 (same error + same “timeout waiting for child process to exit”). Might be worth consolidating these so the reports/log threads are in one place.
This issue thread:
019bda5c-f734-7fd2-82fe-e4056c2bbefb#9211 threads:
019bbd13-a821-7a93-abe2-d1afa5733ae7,019bc34c-e247-7341-b2db-06f62d55bf57If you’re trying to reduce noise, I think this can be closed as a duplicate of #9211.
same error with
timeout waiting for child process to exitOr mention your thread ID 019c037a-73ff-7202-994c-701e51523059 in an existing issue.
@adogwangwang and @mumong, thanks for reporting. Are you on a corporate network/VPN/proxy that you know of? We don't set an explicit timeout ourselves, so trying to see what's terminating the connection.
@sayan-oai @etraut-openai This looks like a duplicate of #9211 — same exact error string (
Error running remote compact task: timeout waiting for child process to exit) and same Linux repro (auto-compact or using thecompactcommand). Suggest consolidating discussion there and closing one to reduce fragmentation (can carry over any extra details from this thread).Closing in favor of #9211.