# Metricbeat doesn't recognize the process

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-doesnt-recognize-the-process/263176>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** metricbeat\
**Created:** [February 3, 2021, 10:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-doesnt-recognize-the-process/263176 "2021-02-03T22:53:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 4:53am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/metricbeat-doesnt-recognize-the-process/263176/2 "2021-02-04T04:53:25Z")

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Hi @xyz2

So what may be happening is that you are using the default system.yml (system module) see with the defaults for the p[rocess metric set](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/metricbeat-metricset-system-process.html) so you are probably using the Top N settings and sometimes the process you are looking for is in the Top 5 other times it is not

```
- module: system
  period: 10s
  metricsets:
    - cpu
    - load
    - memory
    - network
    - process
    - process_summary
    - socket_summary
    #- entropy
    #- core
    #- diskio
    #- socket
    #- service
    #- users
  process.include_top_n:
    by_cpu: 5 # include top 5 processes by CPU
    by_memory: 5 # include top 5 processes by memory

```

Above are the default settings

**`process.include_top_n`**

These options allow you to filter out all processes that are not in the top N by CPU or memory, in order to reduce the number of documents created. If both the `by_cpu` and `by_memory` options are used, the union of the two sets is included.

If you want all processes take out the top and use something like this

**`processes`**

When the `process` metricset is enabled, you can use the `processes` option to define a list of regexp expressions to filter the processes that are reported. For more complex filtering, you should use the `processors` configuration option. See [_Processors_](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/filtering-and-enhancing-data.html) for more information.

The following example config returns metrics for all processes:

`processes: ['.*']`

Careful that might return A LOT of data ...

So you can adjust there are many settings to adjust it depends on what you want.

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