Microsoft releases preview of Process Monitor (ProcMon) utility for Linux

Microsoft's romance with open source has led to the bringing of Process Monitor - Windows Sysinternals to the Linux platform.

While the company embarked on porting Sysinternals tools to Linux starting with ProcDump, a command-line utility with the primary purpose of monitoring applications for CPU spikes.

Besides ProcDump, Microsoft also planned to port other highly popular Sysinternals software packages to Linux, as it has now released preview version 1.0 of Process Monitor (ProcMon) utility for Linux-based operating systems.

What Process Monitor (ProcMon) brings to Linux?

Process Monitor (ProcMon) is an advanced monitoring tool that shows real-time file system, and process/thread activity.

It combines the features of Filemon and Regmon, two legacy Sysinternals utilities, with an extensive list of enhancements such as rich and non-destructive filtering, reliable process information, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. See other capabilities below:

Configurable and movable columns for any event property
Reliable capture of process details, including image path, command line, user and session ID
Advanced logging architecture scales to tens of millions of captured events and gigabytes of log data
Capture of thread stacks for each operation make it possible in many cases to identify the root cause of an operation
Process tree tool shows relationship of all processes referenced in a trace
Non-destructive filters allow you to set filters without losing data

These uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in Linux system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

How to Get Started with ProcMon For Linux

If you are already using Procmon on Windows and want to use it on your Linux system as well, it will be quite familiar to you.

You can download and install Procmon on your Linux system, by simply following the installation instructions that's available here. And the Debian package for Procmon 1.0 is also now available for download.