Processes Input Plugin

This plugin gathers info about the total number of processes and groups them by status (zombie, sleeping, running, etc.)

Introduced in: Telegraf v0.11.0 Tags: system OS support: freebsd, linux, macos

Global configuration options

Plugins support additional global and plugin configuration settings for tasks such as modifying metrics, tags, and fields, creating aliases, and configuring plugin ordering. See CONFIGURATION.md for more details.

Configuration

# Get the number of processes and group them by status
# This plugin ONLY supports non-Windows
[[inputs.processes]]
  ## Use sudo to run ps command on *BSD systems. Linux systems will read
  ## /proc, so this does not apply there.
  # use_sudo = false

Another possible configuration is to define an alternative path for resolving the /proc location. Using the environment variable HOST_PROC the plugin will retrieve process information from the specified location.

docker run -v /proc:/rootfs/proc:ro -e HOST_PROC=/rootfs/proc

Using sudo

Linux systems will read from /proc, while BSD systems will use the ps command. The ps command generally does not require elevated permissions. However, if a user wants to collect system-wide stats, elevated permissions are required. If the user has configured sudo with the ability to run this command, then set the use_sudo to true.

If your account does not already have the ability to run commands with passwordless sudo then updates to the sudoers file are required. Below is an example to allow the requires ps commands:

First, use the visudo command to start editing the sudoers file. Then add the following content, where <username> is the username of the user that needs this access:

Cmnd_Alias PS = /bin/ps
<username> ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: PS
Defaults!PS !logfile, !syslog, !pam_session

Metrics

• processes
  • fields:
    • blocked (aka disk sleep or uninterruptible sleep)
    • running
    • sleeping
    • stopped
    • total
    • zombie
    • dead
    • wait (freebsd only)
    • idle (bsd and Linux 4+ only)
    • paging (linux only)
    • parked (linux only)
    • total_threads (linux only)

Different OSes use slightly different State codes for their processes, these state codes are documented in man ps, and I will give a mapping of what major OS state codes correspond to in telegraf metrics:

Linux  FreeBSD  Darwin  meaning
  R       R       R     running
  S       S       S     sleeping
  Z       Z       Z     zombie
  X      none    none   dead
  T       T       T     stopped
  I       I       I     idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds)
  D      D,L      U     blocked (waiting in uninterruptible sleep, or locked)
  W       W      none   paging (linux kernel < 2.6 only), wait (freebsd)

Example Output

processes blocked=8i,running=1i,sleeping=265i,stopped=0i,total=274i,zombie=0i,dead=0i,paging=0i,total_threads=687i 1457478636980905042