Program path name

[lars-t-hansen]

Jørn wants to know if we can somehow record the program path name. This would maybe be /proc/PID/exe, which is a symlink to the executable - we can resolve that name maybe. The purpose of having this is to look for jobs that are running executables from the "wrong" directory and may need help getting things set up properly. But it might also help us disambiguate program names better, in the limit.

I'm envisioning a new field, exe=whatever, in the sonar output.

[bast]

Good suggestion!

[lars-t-hansen]

It remains to be seen whether the symlink can be resolved through private directories (if I were an OS designer I would not allow that) but at least for executables installed by us it's possible, and that can at a minimum create a filter that we can check other things against, whether we have full information about them or not.

[lars-t-hansen]

Good and bad news:

• the /proc/PID/exe link is fully resolved, ie, it truly points to where the file was when the program was launched
• the /proc/PID/exe link is only readable for the owner of the process

So this is one of those things that will require elevated privileges, if we want to do it, and extra care, if we want to retain the data, since the data may actually be sensitive.