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pidpersec(8) System Manager's Manual pidpersec(8)

NAME

pidpersec - Count new processes (via fork()). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.

SYNOPSIS

pidpersec

DESCRIPTION

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.

REQUIREMENTS

CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

EXAMPLES

Count new processes created each second:
# pidpersec

OVERHEAD

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.

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

Brendan Gregg

SEE ALSO

top(1)
2015-08-18 USER COMMANDS