NAME

setproctitle — set process title

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdlib.h>

void
setproctitle(const char *fmt, ...);

DESCRIPTION

The setproctitle() function sets the invoking process's title. The process title is set to the last component of the program name, followed by a colon and the formatted string specified by fmt. If fmt is NULL, the colon and formatted string are omitted. The length of a process title is limited to 2048 bytes.

EXAMPLES

Set the process title to the program name, with no further information:

setproctitle(NULL);

Set the process title to the program name, an informational string, and the process id:

setproctitle("foo! (%d)", getpid());

SEE ALSO

ps(1), w(1), getprogname(3), printf(3)

HISTORY

The setproctitle() function first appeared in NetBSD 1.0.

CAVEATS

It is important never to pass a string with user-supplied data as a format without using ‘%s’. An attacker can put format specifiers in the string to mangle your stack, leading to a possible security hole. This holds true even if you have built the string “by hand” using a function like snprintf(), as the resulting string may still contain user-supplied conversion specifiers for later interpolation by setproctitle().

Always be sure to use the proper secure idiom:

setproctitle("%s", string);