1.\" Copyright (c) 1995 Peter Wemm <peter@FreeBSD.org> 2.\" All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, is permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice immediately at the beginning of the file, without modification, 9.\" this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer. 10.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 11.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 12.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 13.\" 3. This work was done expressly for inclusion into FreeBSD. Other use 14.\" is permitted provided this notation is included. 15.\" 4. Absolutely no warranty of function or purpose is made by the author 16.\" Peter Wemm. 17.\" 5. Modifications may be freely made to this file providing the above 18.\" conditions are met. 19.\" 20.\" $FreeBSD$ 21.\" 22.\" The following requests are required for all man pages. 23.Dd December 16, 1995 24.Dt SETPROCTITLE 3 25.Os 26.Sh NAME 27.Nm setproctitle 28.Nd set process title 29.Sh SYNOPSIS 30.In sys/types.h 31.In unistd.h 32.Ft void 33.Fn setproctitle "const char *fmt" "..." 34.Sh DESCRIPTION 35The 36.Fn setproctitle 37library routine sets the process title that appears on the 38.Xr ps 1 39command. 40.Pp 41The title is set from the executable's name, followed by the 42result of a 43.Xr printf 3 44style expansion of the arguments as specified by the 45.Va fmt 46argument. 47If the 48.Va fmt 49argument begins with a 50.Dq - 51character, the executable's name is skipped. 52.Pp 53If 54.Va fmt 55is NULL, the process title is restored. 56.Sh EXAMPLES 57To set the title on a daemon to indicate its activity: 58.Bd -literal -offset indent 59setproctitle("talking to %s", inet_ntoa(addr)); 60.Ed 61.Sh SEE ALSO 62.Xr ps 1 , 63.Xr w 1 , 64.Xr kvm 3 , 65.Xr kvm_getargv 3 , 66.Xr printf 3 67.Sh STANDARDS 68The 69.Fn setproctitle 70function 71is implicitly non-standard. 72Other methods of causing the 73.Xr ps 1 74command line to change, including copying over the argv[0] string are 75also implicitly non-portable. 76It is preferable to use an operating system 77supplied 78.Fn setproctitle 79if present. 80.Pp 81Unfortunately, it is possible that there are other calling conventions 82to other versions of 83.Fn setproctitle , 84although none have been found by the author as yet. 85This is believed to be 86the predominant convention. 87.Pp 88It is thought that the implementation is compatible with other systems, 89including 90.Nx 91and 92.Bsx . 93.Sh HISTORY 94The 95.Fn setproctitle 96function 97first appeared in 98.Fx 2.2 . 99Other operating systems have 100similar functions. 101.Sh AUTHORS 102.An -nosplit 103.An Peter Wemm Aq Mt peter@FreeBSD.org 104stole the idea from the 105.Sy "Sendmail 8.7.3" 106source code by 107.An Eric Allman Aq Mt eric@sendmail.org . 108.Sh BUGS 109Never pass a string with user-supplied data as a format without using 110.Ql %s . 111An attacker can put format specifiers in the string to mangle your stack, 112leading to a possible security hole. 113This holds true even if the string was built using a function like 114.Fn snprintf , 115as the resulting string may still contain user-supplied conversion specifiers 116for later interpolation by 117.Fn setproctitle . 118.Pp 119Always use the proper secure idiom: 120.Pp 121.Dl setproctitle("%s", string); 122