How can I set the process name for a Java-program?

Mnementh picture Mnementh · Jun 29, 2009 · Viewed 85.6k times · Source

If a Java program is started, it get's in the system process-monitor the name java. Many Java-programs are that way hard to distinguish. So it would be nice, if a way exists, to set the name, that will be shown in the process-monitor. I'm aware that this may work different on different Operating Systems.

A simple way would be, if the java-interpreter would support a switch to set the name, like this:

java -processname MyProgram -jar MyProgram

But I couldn't find such a switch, so it is probably non-existant. An API in Java to set the process-name would be also fine.

So, so you have any suggestions?

Answer

omerkudat picture omerkudat · Jun 29, 2009

I don't know if this is possible, but you could use a command line tool that comes with the JDK called 'jps'. It's like *nix ps, but just Java programs instead. jps -v shows all the arguments you have passed to java.

Also, I have seen people attach a "process name" to their java processes by adding an unused -Dmyprocessname to the args.