# Differenciate processes by their arguments

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/differenciate-processes-by-their-arguments/44055>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [March 10, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/differenciate-processes-by-their-arguments/44055 "2016-03-10T16:35:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![palmerabollo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/palmerabollo/32/44772_2.png) [@palmerabollo](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/palmerabollo)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/differenciate-processes-by-their-arguments/44055/1 "2016-03-10T16:35:46Z")

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I know that topbet (gosigar) gets the process name from /proc/:pid/stat in Linux.

I have different nodejs processes in the same box:

```
$ ps -ef | grep node
myuser 29334 29332 0 12:43 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/node /opt/myapp/process1
myuser 29340 29337 0 12:45 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/node /opt/myapp/process2

```

and all of them are "node" for topbeat. Is there any way to get the arguments (opt/myapp/process1 in the example) to differenciate the processes with a human-readable identifier? The pid is not very user friendly.

Thanks

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**Author:** ![monica](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/monica/32/3696_2.png) [@monica](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/monica)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/differenciate-processes-by-their-arguments/44055/2 "2016-03-10T16:56:25Z")

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Starting with the next version, Topbeat would be able to export the entire command line that we used for starting the process. Here is the pull request: [https://github.com/elastic/beats/pull/749](https://github.com/elastic/beats/pull/749) and it's already merged to master. The next release will be available at the end of this month.

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**Author:** ![palmerabollo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/palmerabollo/32/44772_2.png) [@palmerabollo](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/palmerabollo)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2016, 1:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/differenciate-processes-by-their-arguments/44055/3 "2016-03-11T13:51:57Z")

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Ok, thanks Monica.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 9:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/differenciate-processes-by-their-arguments/44055/4 "2017-07-05T21:54:41Z")

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