FORKSTAT
Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: 8 February 2023
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NAME
forkstat - a tool to show process fork/exec/exit activity
SYNOPSIS
forkstat
[options]
DESCRIPTION
Forkstat is a program that logs process fork(), exec(), exit(), coredump and
process name change activity.
It is useful for monitoring system behaviour and to track down rogue processes
that are spawning off processes and potentially abusing the system.
Note that forkstat uses the Linux netlink connector to gather process activity
and this may miss events if the system is overly busy. Netlink connector also requires
root privilege.
Forkstat will display several columns of process related information:
Title | Description
|
Time | When the fork/exec/exit event occurred.
|
Event | Type of event.
|
PID | Process or thread ID.
|
Info | Parent or child if a fork, or process exit(2) value.
|
Duration |
On exit, the duration the command ran for in seconds.
|
Process |
The process name. The name will be in [ ] brackets if it is a kernel thread.
|
OPTIONS
forkstat options are as follow:
- -c
-
use the process 16 character comm field for the process name rather than command
line information.
- -d
-
strip off the directory path from the process name.
- -D seconds
-
specify duration in seconds to run forkstat.
- -e
-
specify events to trace as a comma separated list. By default the fork, exec and exit
events are traced. Available events are:
Event | Description
|
fork | forks
|
exec | execs
|
exit | exits
|
core | core dumps
|
comm | process name changes in comm field
|
clone | clone (normally on thread creation)
|
ptrce | ptrace attach or detach
|
uid | uid/gid events
|
sid | sid events
|
all | all the events above
|
- -E
-
enable all events, equivalent to -e all
- -g
-
show glyph annotations of events, useful for easier identification of
different events.
- -h
-
show brief help summary.
- -l
-
set stdout to line-buffered mode.
- -p pgrpid
-
only show processes that match the process group id pgrpid
- -r
-
run with real time FIFO scheduling with maximum priority to keep up with high volumes
of process events.
- -s
-
show short process name information.
- -S
-
show event statistics.
- -q
-
run quietly and enable the -S option.
- -x
-
show extra process related information: user ID and TTY of the process.
- -X
-
equivalent to options -E -g -r -S -x, all events, glyphs, real time FIFO
scheduling, statistics and extra process information.
EXAMPLES
Show process activity with short process names and directory base path stripped off:
-
forkstat -s -d
Trace forks and core dumps only:
-
forkstat -e fork,core
Trace all events and print statistics at end:
-
forkstat -e all -S
Trace all events for 10 minutes:
-
forkstat -E -D 600
Trace clones for 1 minute:
-
forkstat -e clone -D 60
SEE ALSO
vmstat(8)
AUTHOR
forkstat was written by Colin Ian King <colin.i.king@gmail.com>. Thanks also
for contributions from Philipp Gesang.
This manual page was written by Colin Ian King <colin.i.king@gmail.com>,
for the Ubuntu project (but may be used by others).
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2014-2021 Canonical Ltd, Copyright © 2021-2023 Colin Ian King.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- EXAMPLES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AUTHOR
-
- COPYRIGHT
-
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Time: 08:21:18 GMT, March 29, 2024