Process and Process Runtime Resources

Status: Experimental

Process

type: process

Description: An operating system process.

Attribute Type Description Examples Requirement Level
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 (PID). 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
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:

process.runtime.name process.runtime.version process.runtime.description
BEAM 11.1 Erlang/OTP 23 erts-11.1

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:

process.runtime.name Description
go Official Go compiler. Also known as cmd/compile.
gccgo gccgo is a Go front end for GCC.
tinygo TinyGo compiler.

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

Name process.runtime.name process.runtime.version process.runtime.description
OpenJDK OpenJDK Runtime Environment 11.0.8+10 Oracle Corporation OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 11.0.8+10
AdoptOpenJDK Eclipse J9 OpenJDK Runtime Environment 11.0.8+10 Eclipse OpenJ9 Eclipse OpenJ9 VM openj9-0.21.0
AdoptOpenJDK Hotspot OpenJDK Runtime Environment 11.0.8+10 AdoptOpenJDK OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 11.0.8+10
SapMachine OpenJDK Runtime Environment 11.0.8+10-LTS-sapmachine SAP SE OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 11.0.8+10-LTS-sapmachine
Zulu OpenJDK OpenJDK Runtime Environment 11.0.8+10-LTS Azul Systems, Inc OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Zulu11.41+23-CA
Oracle Hotspot 8 (32 bit) Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 1.8.0_221-b11 Oracle Corporation Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 25.221-b11
IBM J9 8 Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 8.0.5.25 - pwa6480sr5fp25-20181030_01(SR5 FP25) IBM Corporation IBM J9 VM 2.9
Android 11 Android Runtime 0.9 The Android Project Dalvik 2.1.0

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

Name process.runtime.name process.runtime.version
Node.js nodejs 14.15.4
Web Browser browser Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/97.0.4692.71 Safari/537.36

.NET Runtimes

TODO(https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/issues/1281): Confirm the contents here

Value Description
dotnet-core .NET Core, .NET 5+
dotnet-framework .NET Framework
mono Mono

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:

Name process.runtime.name process.runtime.version process.runtime.description
CPython 3.7.3 on Windows cpython 3.7.3 3.7.3 (v3.7.3:ef4ec6ed12, Mar 25 2019, 22:22:05) [MSC v.1916 64 bit (AMD64)]
CPython 3.8.6 on Linux cpython 3.8.6 3.8.6 (default, Sep 30 2020, 04:00:38)
[GCC 10.2.0]
PyPy 3 7.3.2 on Linux pypy 3.7.4 3.7.4 (?, Sep 27 2020, 15:12:26)
[PyPy 7.3.2-alpha0 with GCC 10.2.0]

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

Name process.runtime.name process.runtime.version process.runtime.description
MRI ruby 2.7.1 ruby 2.7.1p83 (2020-03-31 revision a0c7c23c9c) [x86_64-darwin19]
TruffleRuby truffleruby 2.6.2 truffleruby (Shopify) 20.0.0-dev-92ed3059, like ruby 2.6.2, GraalVM CE Native [x86_64-darwin]