Process and process runtime resources

Status: Development

Process

Status:

type: process

Description: An operating system process.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
process.args_count		Conditionally Required [1]	int	Length of the process.command_args array [2]	4
process.command		Conditionally Required [3]	string	The command used to launch the process (i.e. the command name). On Linux based systems, can be set to the zeroth string in proc/[pid]/cmdline. On Windows, can be set to the first parameter extracted from GetCommandLineW.	cmd/otelcol
process.command_args		Conditionally Required [4]	string[]	All the command arguments (including the command/executable itself) as received by the process. On Linux-based systems (and some other Unixoid systems supporting procfs), can be set according to the list of null-delimited strings extracted from proc/[pid]/cmdline. For libc-based executables, this would be the full argv vector passed to main. SHOULD NOT be collected by default unless there is sanitization that excludes sensitive data.	["cmd/otecol", "--config=config.yaml"]
process.command_line		Conditionally Required [5]	string	The full command used to launch the process as a single string representing the full command. On Windows, can be set to the result of GetCommandLineW. Do not set this if you have to assemble it just for monitoring; use process.command_args instead. SHOULD NOT be collected by default unless there is sanitization that excludes sensitive data.	C:\cmd\otecol --config="my directory\config.yaml"
process.executable.name		Conditionally Required [6]	string	The name of the process executable. On Linux based systems, this SHOULD be set to the base name of the target of /proc/[pid]/exe. On Windows, this SHOULD be set to the base name of GetProcessImageFileNameW.	otelcol
process.executable.path		Conditionally Required [7]	string	The full path to the process executable. On Linux based systems, can be set to the target of proc/[pid]/exe. On Windows, can be set to the result of GetProcessImageFileNameW.	/usr/bin/cmd/otelcol
process.creation.time		Recommended	string	The date and time the process was created, in ISO 8601 format.	2023-11-21T09:25:34.853Z
process.interactive		Recommended	boolean	Whether the process is connected to an interactive shell.
process.linux.cgroup		Recommended	string	The control group associated with the process. [8]	1:name=systemd:/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-3.scope; 0::/user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/tmux-spawn-0267755b-4639-4a27-90ed-f19f88e53748.scope
process.owner		Recommended	string	The username of the user that owns the process.	root
process.parent_pid		Recommended	int	Parent Process identifier (PPID).	111
process.pid		Recommended	int	Process identifier (PID).	1234
process.title		Recommended	string	Process title (proctitle) [9]	cat /etc/hostname; xfce4-session; bash
process.working_directory		Recommended	string	The working directory of the process.	/root

[1] process.args_count: See Selecting process attributes for details.

[2] process.args_count: This field can be useful for querying or performing bucket analysis on how many arguments were provided to start a process. More arguments may be an indication of suspicious activity.

[3] process.command: See Selecting process attributes for details.

[4] process.command_args: See Selecting process attributes for details.

[5] process.command_line: See Selecting process attributes for details.

[6] process.executable.name: See Selecting process attributes for details.

[7] process.executable.path: See Selecting process attributes for details.

[8] process.linux.cgroup: Control groups (cgroups) are a kernel feature used to organize and manage process resources. This attribute provides the path(s) to the cgroup(s) associated with the process, which should match the contents of the /proc/[PID]/cgroup file.

[9] process.title: In many Unix-like systems, process title (proctitle), is the string that represents the name or command line of a running process, displayed by system monitoring tools like ps, top, and htop.

Selecting process attributes

At least one of the following attributes is required:

• process.executable.name
• process.executable.path
• process.command
• process.command_line
• process.command_args

Between process.command_args and process.command_line, usually process.command_args should be preferred. On Windows and other systems where the native format of process commands is a single string, process.command_line can additionally (or instead) be used.

process.args_count can be additional be provided or instead when sanitization of the arguments is not being performed.

Process runtimes

Status:

type: process.runtime

Description: The single (language) runtime instance which is monitored.

Attributes:

Key	Stability	Requirement Level	Value Type	Description	Example Values
process.runtime.description		Recommended	string	An additional description about the runtime of the process, for example a specific vendor customization of the runtime environment.	Eclipse OpenJ9 Eclipse OpenJ9 VM openj9-0.21.0
process.runtime.name		Recommended	string	The name of the runtime of this process.	OpenJDK Runtime Environment
process.runtime.version		Recommended	string	The version of the runtime of this process, as returned by the runtime without modification.	14.0.2

How to set these attributes for particular runtime kinds is described in the following subsections.

In addition to these attributes, telemetry.sdk.language can be used to determine the general kind of runtime used.

Erlang runtimes

• process.runtime.name - The name of the Erlang VM being used, i.e., erlang:system_info(machine).
• process.runtime.version - The version of the runtime (ERTS - Erlang Runtime System), i.e., erlang:system_info(version).
• process.runtime.description - string | An additional description about the runtime made by combining the OTP version, i.e., erlang:system_info(otp_release), and ERTS version.

Example:

Go runtimes

Go Runtimes SHOULD fill in the as follows:

• process.runtime.name - Fill in an interpretation of Go’s runtime.Compiler constant, according to the following rule: If the value is gc, fill in go. Otherwise, fill in the exact value of runtime.Compiler.

  This can be implemented with the following Go snippet:

  import "runtime"
  
  func getRuntimeName() string {
    if runtime.Compiler == "gc" {
      return "go"
    }
    return runtime.Compiler
  }
  

• process.runtime.version - Fill in the exact value returned by runtime.Version(), i.e. go1.17.

• process.runtime.description - Use of this field is not recommended.

Examples for some Go compilers/runtimes:

Java runtimes

Java instrumentation SHOULD fill in the values by copying from system properties.

• process.runtime.name - Fill in the value of java.runtime.name as is
• process.runtime.version - Fill in the value of java.runtime.version as is
• process.runtime.description - Fill in the values of java.vm.vendor, java.vm.name, java.vm.version in that order, separated by spaces.

Examples for some Java runtimes

JavaScript runtimes

JavaScript instrumentation SHOULD fill in the values by copying from built-in runtime constants.

• process.runtime.name:
  • When the runtime is Node.js, fill in the constant value nodejs.
  • When the runtime is Web Browser, fill in the constant value browser.
• process.runtime.version:
  • When the runtime is Node.js, fill in the value of process.versions.node.
  • When the runtime is Web Browser, fill in the value of navigator.userAgent.

Examples for some JavaScript runtimes

.NET runtimes

.NET instrumentation SHOULD fill in the values by following values:

• process.runtime.name - Fill in the value by the name of runtime.
• process.runtime.version - Fill in the value of System.Environment.Version for .NET, determine version based on the registry values for .NET Framework
• process.runtime.description - Fill in the values of System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation.FrameworkDescription.

process.runtime.name has the following list of well-known values. If one of them applies, then the respective value SHOULD be used, otherwise a custom value SHOULD be used.

• .NET Framework
• .NET
• .NET Core
• .NET Native

Examples for some .NET runtimes

Python runtimes

Python instrumentation SHOULD fill in the values as follows:

• process.runtime.name - Fill in the value of sys.implementation.name

• process.runtime.version - Fill in the sys.implementation.version values separated by dots. Leave out the release level and serial if the release level equals final and the serial equals zero (leave out either both or none).

  This can be implemented with the following Python snippet:

  vinfo = sys.implementation.version
  result =  ".".join(map(
      str,
      vinfo[:3]
      if vinfo.releaselevel == "final" and not vinfo.serial
      else vinfo
  ))
  

• process.runtime.description - Fill in the value of sys.version as-is.

Examples for some Python runtimes:

Note that on CPython GCC/Clang Linux builds (up to and including 3.9) and PyPy, there is an actual newline in the sys.version string.

Ruby runtimes

Ruby instrumentation SHOULD fill in the values by copying from built-in runtime constants.

• process.runtime.name - Fill in the value of RUBY_ENGINE as is
• process.runtime.version - Fill in the value of RUBY_VERSION as is
• process.runtime.description - Fill in the value of RUBY_DESCRIPTION as is

Examples for some Ruby runtimes