Process by name

Process by name probe returns information about process with the specified name and/or argument.

Settings example

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Field Description

Process*

Process name for search. The value has to match strictly to the process name to be found. For instance, for the value nodejs: the process name matches to nodejs.

Arguments contain*

The search for processes with arguments, that contain the specified value. For instance, for the value Rest: one of the arguments of any process contains Rest.

Period

How often to perform the check (60 seconds by default).

* To set up this probe it is enough to fill either field.
If the both fields are filled the logical operator AND is applied.
For instance, process name matches to nodejs AND one of the arguments of the found processes contains Rest.

Result

After the check has been done result is displayed in the Data table:

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Field Description

arguments.xxx

The arguments of the process.

bytesResident

Total process resident memory. It correspond to the column %MEM of the ps and top utilities; it shows percentage of using RAM by the process.

bytesShared

Total process shared memory. It represents amount of memory, which can potentially be shared with other processes.

bytesVirtual

Total process virtual memory (virtual memory usage).

lastTime

The last time when the process was run on the CPU.

name

The name of the found process.

nice

The value of the Nice priority. It ranges from 19 (nicest) to -20 (not nice to others).

parentId

The ID of the parent process (PPID).

percentCpu

How much of the CPU the process is using (or "process cpu usage").

processId

The process ID (PID).

startTime

The time when the process started.

state

Process state code:

  • D uninterruptible sleep (usually IO) | the process awaits input/output (or other short event),

  • I is multi-threaded (using CLONE_THREAD, like NPTL pthreads do),

  • L has pages locked into memory (for real-time and custom IO),

  • N low-priority (nice to other users),

  • R running or runnable (on run queue) | the process is being executed or ready to be executed,

  • s is the session leader,

  • S interruptible sleep (waiting for an event to complete) | the process is in standby mode (it has been sleeping less than 20 seconds),

  • T stopped, either by a job control signal or because it is being traced,

  • W paging (not valid since the 2.6.xx kernel),

  • X dead (should never be seen) | the process is about to be terminated,

  • Z defunct ("zombie") process, terminated but not reaped by its parent,

  • < high-priority (not nice to other users),

  • + is in the foreground process group.

systemCpu

Process CPU kernel time.

totalCpu

Process CPU time (sum of userCpu and systemCpu).

tty

The terminal, associated with the process.

uptime

The time during which the process is running.

userCpu

Process CPU user time.

Rows is an additional field in which the array length is indicated.

Total number of rows is displayed when the array value is the result of the probe or the input data.

Command-line utility

This check is the counterpart of the terminal command ps:

$ ps aux | head -1 ; sudo ps aux | grep 'nodejs.*Rest' | grep -v grep

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
saymon   29050  3.7  4.7 1359092 194040 ?      Sl   Nov30 363:39 /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/saymon/server/actors/lib/forked-actor-worker.js RestServerActor