how to change the name of a Java application process?

Question

These methods are suited for servers with a lot of java processes running, and where you need a quick way of finding the correct jvm (not using jps.) For applications, I suppose launch4j or another wrapper is the way to go.

On unix, If you are launching from a shell sript (at least for bash and possibly for other decent shells) you can use:

exec -a goodname java ...

to launch java and pass "goodname" as the 0th argument, which will be shown as the process name in ps etc.

A perhaps better alternative (that seems to work also for top) is to create a symlink: ln -s /usr/bin/java /usr/local/bin/kallekula.

Shortcuts in windows won't do the trick, but windows vista/7 supports symlinks using mklink. That may work, but I haven't tested. I am not sure if exec -a also works with cygwin bash on Windows.

Check out launch4j, it is an executable wrapper that allows you to assign executable names.

Unless you launch Java via JNI in your own custom built executable, the process name will always be java.exe.

There are several java launchers/wrappers that can generate this executable for you.

• Launch4j, looks to be the most recent and up to date
• JSmooth
• install4J, commercial, more than you need

This is specific to Windows.
I was facing the same issue where I have to kill the specific java program using taskkill. When I run the java program, tasklist was showing the same program with Image name set as java.exe. But killing it using taskkill /F java.exe will stop all other java applications other than intended one which is not required.

So I run the same java program using:

start "MyProgramName" java java-program..

Here start command will open a new window and run the java program with window's title set to MyProgramName.

Now to kil this java-program use the following taskkill command:

taskkill /fi "MyProgramName"

Your Java program will be killed only. Rest will be unaffected.

If you're using the Sun JDK, you can also use the "jps" command line tool to get a detailed list of Java processes running on the box.

You can do this with an LD_PRELOAD shim: https://github.com/airlift/procname

The shim simply calls the Linux-specific prctl() when the process starts:

static void __attribute__ ((constructor)) procname_init()
{
   prctl(PR_SET_NAME, "myname");
}

The call has to happen on the main thread, so it isn't possible to do this from Java or even with a JVMTI agent, since those happen on a different thread.

Assuming that what you are really after is a way to terminate the correct the correct process later on, then an alternative solution is this:

Run ps -ef | grep java and you should get a listing that looks something like this:

 mruser    7518  7505  4 11:37 pts/3    00:00:00 /usr/bin/java -classpath MRD3030_Linked.jar peralex.MyApp

Then pkill -f peralex.MyApp will kill the correct process.