Process and Process Runtime Resources

Status: Experimental

Process

type: process

Description: An operating system process.

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Requirement Level	Stability
process.command	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	Conditionally Required See alternative attributes below.
process.command_args	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.	[cmd/otecol, --config=config.yaml]	Conditionally Required See alternative attributes below.
process.command_line	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.	C:\cmd\otecol --config="my directory\config.yaml"	Conditionally Required See alternative attributes below.
process.executable.name	string	The name of the process executable. On Linux based systems, can be set to the Name in proc/[pid]/status. On Windows, can be set to the base name of GetProcessImageFileNameW.	otelcol	Conditionally Required See alternative attributes below.
process.executable.path	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	Conditionally Required See alternative attributes below.
process.owner	string	The username of the user that owns the process.	root	Recommended
process.parent_pid	int	Parent Process identifier (PPID).	111	Recommended
process.pid	int	Process identifier (PID).	1234	Recommended

Additional attribute requirements: At least one of the following sets of 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.

For backwards compatibility with older versions of this semantic convention, it is possible but deprecated to use an array as type for process.command_line. In that case it MUST be interpreted as if it was process.command_args.

Process runtimes

type: process.runtime

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

Attribute	Type	Description	Examples	Requirement Level	Stability
process.runtime.description	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	Recommended
process.runtime.name	string	The name of the runtime of this process. For compiled native binaries, this SHOULD be the name of the compiler.	OpenJDK Runtime Environment	Recommended
process.runtime.version	string	The version of the runtime of this process, as returned by the runtime without modification.	14.0.2	Recommended

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 Linux, there is an actual newline in the sys.version string, and the CPython string had a trailing space in the first line.

Pypy provided a CPython-compatible version in sys.implementation.version instead of the actual implementation version which is available in sys.version.

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