Feature Idea: MailScanner process name

[Steve Freegard]

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On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 18:02 +0000, Julian Field wrote:
> I tried this a long time ago, setting $0 to the name you want. 
> Unfortunately it only worked on Linux so I didn't bother implementing 
> it. Guess I could do it anyway as most MailScanner users are on Linux.

I've just checked 'perldoc perlvar' and the situation might be a bit
different now:

<snip>
$0      Contains the name of the program being executed.
        On some (read: not all) operating systems assigning to $0 modi-
        fies the argument area that the "ps" program sees.  On some
        platforms you may have to use special "ps" options or a differ-
        ent "ps" to see the changes.  Modifying the $0 is more useful
        as a way of indicating the current program state than it is for
        hiding the program youâ^À^Ùre running.  

        Note for BSD users: setting $0 does not completely remove
        "perl" from the ps(1) output.  For example, setting $0 to "foo-
        bar" may result in "perl: foobar (perl)" (whether both the
        "perl: " prefix and the " (perl)" suffix are shown depends on
        your exact BSD variant and version).  This is an operating sys-
        tem feature, Perl cannot help it.
</snip>

> 
> How many people actually want it?
> 

Well - you can count me as +1 for this as I think it's useful for
debugging and for status reporting purposes and the operating systems
that don't support this won't be affected by the change.

However - I realise that this is going to be a *pig* to test to get the
check_MailScanner script to work correctly and won't be worth the hassle
if only a few people want this in.

Cheers,
Steve.

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