pidpersec - Count new processes (via fork()). Uses Linux eBPF/bcc. pidpersec pidpersec shows how many new processes were created each second. There can be performance issues caused by many short-lived processes, which may not be visible in sampling tools like top(1). pidpersec provides one way to investigate this behavior. This works by tracing the kernel sched_fork() function using dynamic tracing, and will need updating to match any changes to this function. Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool. CONFIG_BPF and bcc.

Count new processes created each second: # pidpersec

This traces the kernel fork function, and maintains an in-kernel count which is read asynchronously from user-space. As the rate of this is generally expected to be low (<< 1000/s), the overhead is also expected to be negligible. This is from bcc. https://github.com/iovisor/bcc

Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.

Linux Unstable - in development. Brendan Gregg top(1)