NAME¶
setproctitle
—
set process title
LIBRARY¶
library “libbsd”
SYNOPSIS¶
#include
<sys/types.h>
#include
<bsd/unistd.h>
void
setproctitle_init
(
int
argc,
char
*argv[],
char
*envp[]);
void
setproctitle
(
const
char *fmt,
...);
DESCRIPTION¶
The
setproctitle
() library routine sets the
process title that appears on the
ps(1) command.
The
setproctitle_init
() library routine only
needs to be called (before any call to
setproctitle
() and with
main
() arguments), if the automatic
constructor support has not been linked in through the libbsd-ctor pkg-config
file.
The title is set from the executable's name, followed by the result of a
printf(3) style expansion of the arguments as
specified by the
fmt argument. If the
fmt argument begins with a “-”
character, the executable's name is skipped.
If
fmt is NULL, the process title is restored.
EXAMPLES¶
To set the title on a daemon to indicate its activity:
setproctitle("talking to %s", inet_ntoa(addr));
SEE ALSO¶
ps(1),
w(1),
kvm(3),
kvm_getargv(3),
printf(3)
STANDARDS¶
The
setproctitle
() function is implicitly
non-standard. Other methods of causing the
ps(1)
command line to change, including copying over the argv[0] string are also
implicitly non-portable. It is preferable to use an operating system supplied
setproctitle
() if present.
Unfortunately, it is possible that there are other calling conventions to other
versions of
setproctitle
(), although none
have been found by the author as yet. This is believed to be the predominant
convention.
It is thought that the implementation is compatible with other systems,
including
NetBSD and
BSD/OS.
HISTORY¶
The
setproctitle
() function first appeared in
FreeBSD 2.2. Other operating systems have similar
functions.
The
setproctitle_init
() function is a libbsd
extension not present on the BSDs, avoid using it in portable code.
AUTHORS¶
Peter Wemm ⟨peter@FreeBSD.org⟩
stole the idea from the
Sendmail 8.7.3 source
code by
Eric Allman
⟨eric@sendmail.org⟩.
BUGS¶
Never pass a string with user-supplied data as a format without using
‘
%s
’. An attacker can put format
specifiers in the string to mangle your stack, leading to a possible security
hole. This holds true even if the string was built using a function like
snprintf
(), as the resulting string may
still contain user-supplied conversion specifiers for later interpolation by
setproctitle
().
Always use the proper secure idiom:
setproctitle("%s",
string);