Section 8 · System administration

bcc-exitsnoop.8

Package: bcc-tools

On this page

exitsnoop

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
REQUIREMENTS
OPTIONS
EXAMPLES
FIELDS
OVERHEAD
SOURCE
OS
STABILITY
AUTHOR
SEE ALSO

NAME

exitsnoop − Trace all process termination (exit, fatal signal). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.

SYNOPSIS

exitsnoop [−h] [−t] [−−utc] [−x] [−p PID] [−−label LABEL] [−−per−thread]

DESCRIPTION

exitsnoop traces process termination, showing the command name and reason for termination, either an exit or a fatal signal.

It catches processes of all users, processes in containers, as well as processes that become zombie.

This works by tracing the kernel sched_process_exit() function using dynamic tracing, and will need updating to match any changes to this function.

Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.

REQUIREMENTS

CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

OPTIONS


	−h		Print usage message.
	−t		Include a timestamp column.
	−−utc		Include a timestamp column, use UTC timezone.
	−x		Exclude successful exits, exit( 0 )
	−p PID		Trace this process ID only (filtered in-kernel).

−−label LABEL

Label each line with LABEL (default ’exit’) in first column (2nd if timestamp is present).

−−per−thread

Trace per thread termination

EXAMPLES

Trace all process termination

exitsnoop

Trace all process termination, and include timestamps:

exitsnoop −t

Exclude successful exits, only include non-zero exit codes and fatal
signals:

exitsnoop −x

Trace PID 181 only:

exitsnoop −p 181

Label each output line with ’EXIT’:

exitsnoop −−label EXIT

Trace per thread termination

exitsnoop −−per−thread

FIELDS

TIME-TZ

Time of process termination HH:MM:SS.sss with milliseconds, where TZ is the local time zone, ’UTC’ with −−utc option.


	LABEL		The optional label if −−label option is used. This is useful with the −t option for timestamps when the output of several tracing tools is sorted into one combined output.
	PCOMM		Process/command name.
	PID		Process ID
	PPID		The process ID of the process that will be notified of PID termination.
	TID		Thread ID.

EXIT_CODE

The exit code for exit() or the signal number for a fatal signal.

OVERHEAD

This traces the kernel sched_process_exit() function and prints output for each event. As the rate of this is generally expected to be low (< 1000/s), the overhead is also expected to be negligible. If you have an application that has a high rate of process termination, then test and understand overhead before use.

SOURCE

This is from bcc.

https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

OS

Linux

STABILITY

Unstable - in development.

AUTHOR

Arturo Martin-de-Nicolas