exitsnoop - Trace all process termination (exit, fatal signal). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc. exitsnoop [-h] [-t] [--utc] [-x] [-p PID] [--label LABEL] [--per-thread] exitsnoop traces process termination, showing the command name and reason for termination, either an exit or a fatal signal. It catches processes of all users, processes in containers, as well as processes that become zombie. This works by tracing the kernel sched_process_exit() 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. CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

-h Print usage message.

-t Include a timestamp column.

--utc Include a timestamp column, use UTC timezone.

-x Exclude successful exits, exit( 0 )

-p PID Trace this process ID only (filtered in-kernel).

--label LABEL Label each line with LABEL (default 'exit') in first column (2nd if timestamp is present).

--per-thread Trace per thread termination

Trace all process termination # exitsnoop

Trace all process termination, and include timestamps: # exitsnoop -t

Exclude successful exits, only include non-zero exit codes and fatal signals: # exitsnoop -x

Trace PID 181 only: # exitsnoop -p 181

Label each output line with 'EXIT': # exitsnoop --label EXIT

Trace per thread termination # exitsnoop --per-thread

TIME-TZ Time of process termination HH:MM:SS.sss with milliseconds, where TZ is the local time zone, 'UTC' with --utc option.

LABEL The optional label if --label option is used. This is useful with the -t option for timestamps when the output of several tracing tools is sorted into one combined output.

PCOMM Process/command name.

PID Process ID

PPID The process ID of the process that will be notified of PID termination.

TID Thread ID.

EXIT_CODE The exit code for exit() or the signal number for a fatal signal.

This traces the kernel sched_process_exit() function and prints output for each event. As the rate of this is generally expected to be low (< 1000/s), the overhead is also expected to be negligible. If you have an application that has a high rate of process termination, then test and understand overhead before use. 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.

Linux Unstable - in development. Arturo Martin-de-Nicolas execsnoop(8)