SYNOPSIS

forkstat [-d] [-D] [-e] [-h] [-s] [-S] [-q]

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 exit 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:

-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 seperated 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)
all	all the events above

-h

show brief help summary.

-s

show short process name information.

-S

show event statistics.

-q

run quietly and enable the -S option.

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 all -D 600

Trace clones for 1 minute:

forkstat -e clone -D 60

AUTHOR

forkstat was written by Colin King <[email protected]>

This manual page was written by Colin King <[email protected]>, for the Ubuntu project (but may be used by others).

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2014-2015 Canonical Ltd.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.