A Linux Version of the Procmon Sysinternals Tool

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

LelouBil

166 points

47 comments

github.comTechstory

calmmixed

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40/100

LinuxSysinternalsProcmonSystem Monitoring

Key topics

Linux

Sysinternals

Procmon

System Monitoring

Microsoft has released a Linux version of the Procmon Sysinternals tool, sparking discussion about its features, compatibility, and potential use cases, as well as some concerns about its limitations and build requirements.

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Discussion (47 comments)

Showing 47 comments

perching_aix

4 months ago

2 replies

If this works remotely as well as the Windows version, I'm stoked. Polling for information (like with lsof) really rubs me the wrong way.

calvinmorrison

4 months ago

4 replies

really? i have to use procman and associated utilities often and they really pale in comparison with linux and even moreso other unix utils (like dtrace)

perching_aix

4 months ago

1 reply

Care to expand on that? I'm similarly just forced to use Linux and its tooling ecosystem, so decent chances I'm simply missing what's cool/cooler.

calvinmorrison

4 months ago

yes. I work with ancient and opaque tools that dont have good debugging / reporting facilities. Often we have to jump into procmon or whatever see why the heck the thing is stuck. something like strace is native and everywhere and you can sus out easily - hey this proc is trying to open this thing over and over.

procmon is cool, but i have found it limited when the program isnt doing anything 'obvious', and also that i have to download it and run it from the web is a problem when debugging on client systems.

sirjaz

4 months ago

1 reply

Windows Server 2025 supports dtrace out of the box: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrat...

cyberpunk

4 months ago

1 reply

This really is the weirdest timeline…

actionfromafar

4 months ago

1 reply

But is it like the "real" dtrace or is like how PowerShell wget isn't actually wget but an alias for Invoke-WebRequest?

p_ing

4 months ago

1 reply

Two seconds of investigation yields that it is a port of dtrace.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...

actionfromafar

4 months ago

Well, true, but I'm not in a position to understand what that means. I remember talks about dtrace in Linux way back when and something about how "it's not the same thing, you have to add support in all of userspace which is not there" or something like that.

TiredOfLife

4 months ago

2 replies

really? One of the things I miss when using linux is resmon. I have not found anything that has even remotely the same functionality. For example seeing which process is using which files.

olddustytrail

4 months ago

You can do that with sysdig.

bdhcuidbebe

4 months ago

There’s multiple tools.

For your stated issue, see lsfd

https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/lsfd.1.html

lll-o-lll

4 months ago

dtrace is more comparable to ETW in windows land. Procmon is more for quick and dirty analysis. Maybe there are other *nix tools that are more appropriate, but I look forward to trying this one out.

0x696C6961

4 months ago

Check out sysdig.

notepad0x90

4 months ago

1 reply

does this provide telemetry not available with strace?

And is the output csv/logfile compatible with the windows equivalent? If so, that'd be amazing! tools like procdot can analyze/visualize the data:

https://procdot.com/

xuhu

4 months ago

1 reply

This can trace all processes on the host while strace traces one PID and its descendants. And bpf tracing does not stop processes at each syscall, so they run without slowdowns.

notepad0x90

4 months ago

I think auditd can trace all syscalls system wide and let you filter as well. But it is a daemon whereas this is a tool you can run and interact with.

baranul

4 months ago

4 replies

Expect Microsoft to come out with more Linux tools. The demand, interest, and requests are likely to only increase.

notepad0x90

4 months ago

2 replies

They have one of the largest Linux user base out there in Azure. They have their own distro. My favorite Linux memory forensics tool (AVML) is made by them. Sysmon for Linux uses eBPF which makes it a tad-bit more powerful than auditd,etc..

If you can't beat'em join'em!

dotancohen

4 months ago

  > If you can't beat'em join'em!

Microsoft has a history of joining'em to beat'em. Is EEE no longer a memory?

hdgvhicv

4 months ago

I guess they managed to get rid of the foot

http://mslinux.org/

egorfine

4 months ago

1 reply

I remember Steve Ballmer's Microsoft well enough to know to never touch anything Microsoft for Linux.

(All: feel free to downvote my neckbeard comment because I'm obviously in the wrong here)

spauldo

4 months ago

Yep, right there with you.

JdeBP

4 months ago

One can browse from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/linux/packages to see what is already there.

darkwater

4 months ago

This project is from 2020 [1]. The title should actually be updated to reflect that. Also we would have really go full circle if they used GPLv3 as the license :)

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/ProcMon-for-Linux/blob/main/LIC...

fennec-posix

4 months ago

1 reply

This feels like a TUI front-end for strace, but I'm not complaining. This I think will come in handy.

fennec-posix

4 months ago

Though interestingly, seems to use its own eBPF library

maldonad0

4 months ago

1 reply

Looks like btop but M$.

superkuh

4 months ago

3 replies

The sysinternals guys (Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell) and code, at least most of it, existed independently of microsoft for many years. It was great. So great MS bought it and brought it and them inside. Russinovich is CTO of Azure now or something. So sysinternals is now random MS hires but I like to think it's still not really a microsoft product, just owned and mantained by them.

I was a windows user till XP came out and I've missed sysinternals tools. I'm going to enjoy this on my newer kernel machines. Seems to require some pretty cutting edge features.

K2h

4 months ago

1 reply

Awesome you knew their names! I have connected with Bryce through his development of Go Map!! For open street maps.

SonOfLilit

4 months ago

1 reply

They are celebs in windows security. Mark's name is synonymous with windows internals, he wrote the definitive textbook.

xtracto

4 months ago

And he also is the one that uncovered the Sony CD rootkit fiasco.

Darn I'm getting old.

47282847

4 months ago

1 reply

Tangent: Mark Russinovich (Jun 20, 2025): “I had the thrill of a lifetime, hosting dinner for Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and David Cutler. Linus had never met Bill, and Dave had never met Linus.“

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markrussinovich_i-had-the-thr...

dotancohen

4 months ago

The phrasing implies that meeting someone is not bi-directional.

egorfine

4 months ago

It was truly great for Windows, no doubt about that.

Now, is it great for Linux? Absolutely not. These tools existed to vaguely resemble the capabilities we have had on *nix for decades and I'm not sure what kind of value could they bring back to Linux... like, really, what? A different, Microsoft-style optics to look at processes?

INTPenis

4 months ago

1 reply

This is great but it's kinda sad the INSTALL.md file was updated 2 months ago and it still doesn't work. Won't anyone report these issues?

GTP

4 months ago

1 reply

Go on and be the one that reports it ;)

INTPenis

4 months ago

I will as soon as I get home from work lol.

holowoodman

4 months ago

2 replies

How is this different from using 'htop' and pressing 's' to strace a process?

noname120

4 months ago

1 reply

strace is not available on macOS

happymellon

4 months ago

1 reply

I'm not sure how that is relevant on a piece about "a Linux version of a tool"

noname120

4 months ago

My bad, for some reason I thought it was about macOS rather than Linux. Procmon actually doesn’t even support macOS: https://github.com/microsoft/ProcMon-for-Linux/issues/37

egorfine

4 months ago

This is not microsofty enough.

I mean it.

lillecarl

4 months ago

1 reply

I wonder why the project needs both GCC and Clang to build, usually it's one or the other.

bena

4 months ago

Is it more a "collection of tools held together by a common frontend" or a unified product?

If it's a collection, I can see the individual pieces needing various compilers.