| pidpersec(8) | System Manager's Manual | pidpersec(8) |
pidpersec - Count new processes (via fork()). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.
pidpersec
pidpersec shows how many new processes were created each second. There can be performance issues caused by many short-lived processes, which may not be visible in sampling tools like top(1). pidpersec provides one way to investigate this behavior.
This works by tracing the kernel sched_fork() 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.
CONFIG_BPF and bcc.
This traces the kernel fork function, and maintains an in-kernel count which is read asynchronously from user-space. As the rate of this is generally expected to be low (<< 1000/s), the overhead is also expected to be negligible.
This is from bcc.
Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.
Linux
Unstable - in development.
Brendan Gregg
| 2015-08-18 | USER COMMANDS |