Proper process names in Linux

[nelsonab]

For a long time the lack of useful process names for the Zabbix server and agent has bothered me. Today I decided to fix that. :-)

If you are running the Linux kernel 2.6.9 or above you can use the following to accomplish this. I haven't had the chance to test this on the server, just the agent, but it should work. There is a limitation however, Linux will allow for a maximum of 16 characters when changing the process name.

Agent running on a system:

top - 15:21:14 up 22 days, 13:51, 11 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.06, 0.02
Tasks: 138 total,   1 running, 137 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.5%us,  0.8%sy,  0.2%ni, 97.8%id,  0.3%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.3%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   4044004k total,  1569728k used,  2474276k free,   278096k buffers
Swap:  2104472k total,        0k used,  2104472k free,   741940k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
25402 zabbix    22   5  9032  604  472 S    1  0.0   0:06.62 main process
25401 zabbix    30   5  9032  560  428 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 main process
25403 zabbix    20   5  9040  760  600 S    0  0.0   0:00.28 Listening
25404 zabbix    20   5  9040  760  600 S    0  0.0   0:00.33 Listening
25405 zabbix    20   5  9040  760  600 S    0  0.0   0:00.30 Listening
25406 zabbix    22   5  9040  596  424 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 poller [sleepin

first diff for src/libs/zbxcommon/misc.c:

nelsonab:~/zabbix-1.6.1/src/libs/zbxcommon> rcsdiff -r1.1 misc.c
===================================================================
RCS file: misc.c,v
retrieving revision 1.1
diff -r1.1 misc.c
22a23,24
> #include <sys/prctl.h>
>
143,144d144
< #ifdef HAVE_FUNCTION_SETPROCTITLE
<
152a153,154
> #ifdef HAVE_FUNCTION_SETPROCTITLE
>
155a158,161
>
>   zabbix_log(LOG_LEVEL_DEBUG,"zbx_set_proctitle(\"%s\")",title);
>
>   prctl(PR_SET_NAME, title, NULL, NULL, NULL);

Second diff for src/zabbix_agent/listener.c:

nelsonab:~/zabbix-1.6.1/src/zabbix_agent> rcsdiff -r1.1 listener.c
===================================================================
RCS file: listener.c,v
retrieving revision 1.1
diff -r1.1 listener.c
96a97
>               zbx_setproctitle("Listening");