freebsd-dev/lib/libutil/setproctitle.3

.\" Copyright (c) 1995 Peter Wemm <peter@freebsd.org>
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, is permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice immediately at the beginning of the file, without modification,
.\"    this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. This work was done expressly for inclusion into FreeBSD.  Other use
.\"    is permitted provided this notation is included.
.\" 4. Absolutely no warranty of function or purpose is made by the author
.\"    Peter Wemm.
.\" 5. Modifications may be freely made to this file providing the above
.\"    conditions are met.
.\"
.\" $Id: setproctitle.3,v 1.9 1997/05/11 08:50:33 davidn Exp $
.\"
.\" The following requests are required for all man pages.
.Dd December 16, 1995
.Os FreeBSD
.Dt SETPROCTITLE 3
.Sh NAME
.Nm setproctitle
.Nd set the process title for
.Xr ps 1
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Fd #include <sys/types.h>
.Fd #include <libutil.h>
.Ft void
.Fn setproctitle "const char *fmt" "..."
.Pp
Link with
.Va -lutil
on the
.Xr cc 1
command line.
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn setproctitle
library routine sets the process title that appears on the
.Xr ps 1
command.
.Pp
The title is set from the executable's name, followed by the
result of a
.Xr printf 3
style expansion of the arguments as specified by the
.Va fmt
argument.
.Pp
If
.Va fmt
is NULL, the process title is reset to simply the name of the executable.
.\" The following requests should be uncommented and used where appropriate.
.\" This next request is for sections 2 and 3 function return values only.
.\" .Sh RETURN VALUES
.\" This next request is for sections 1, 6, 7 & 8 only
.\" .Sh ENVIRONMENT
.\" .Sh FILES
.Sh EXAMPLES
To set the title on a daemon to indicate its activity:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
setproctitle("talking to %s", inet_ntoa(addr));
.Ed
.\" This next request is for sections 1, 6, 7 & 8 only
.\"     (command return values (to shell) and fprintf/stderr type diagnostics)
.\" .Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.\" The next request is for sections 2 and 3 error and signal handling only.
.\" .Sh ERRORS
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr ps 1 ,
.Xr w 1 ,
.Xr kvm 3 ,
.Xr kvm_getargv 3 ,
.Xr printf 3
.Sh STANDARDS
.Fn setproctitle
is implicitly non-standard.  Other methods of causing the
.Xr 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
.Fn setproctitle
if present.
.Pp
Unfortunately, it is possible that there are other calling conventions
to other versions of
.Fn setproctitle ,
although none have been found by the author as yet.  This is believed to be
the predominant convention.
.Pp
It is thought that the implementation is compatible with other systems,
including
.Tn NetBSD
and
.Tn BSD/OS .
.Sh HISTORY
.Fn setproctitle
first appeared in
.Fx 2.2 .
Other operating systems have
similar functions.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Peter Wemm Aq peter@FreeBSD.org
stole the idea from the
.Sy "Sendmail 8.7.3"
source code by
.An Eric Allman Aq eric@sendmail.org .
.\" .Sh BUGS