How can I set the process name for a Java-program?

If a Java program is started, it get's in the system process-monitor the name java. Many Java-programs are that way hard to distinguish. So it would be nice, if a way exists, to set the name, that will be shown in the process-monitor. I'm aware that this may work different on different Operating Systems.

A simple way would be, if the java-interpreter would support a switch to set the name, like this:

java -processname MyProgram -jar MyProgram

But I couldn't find such a switch, so it is probably non-existant. An API in Java to set the process-name would be also fine.

So, so you have any suggestions?

I don't know if this is possible, but you could use a command line tool that comes with the JDK called 'jps'. It's like *nix ps, but just Java programs instead. jps -v shows all the arguments you have passed to java.

Also, I have seen people attach a "process name" to their java processes by adding an unused -Dmyprocessname to the args.

as @omerkudat said:

jps -v

prints out all java processes {processID, params list} If the params list is not enough to recognize the applications you need, try adding some dummy params when running them:

java -Dname=myApp -cp  myApp.jar some.client.main.MainFrame

This will print like:

7780 MainFrame -Dname=myApp

and you can use the process ID to kill / monitor it.

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.

When I first read this, the idea of changing the process name struck me as impossible. However, according to this ancient thread on the sun forum you can use C++ wrappers around the JVM executable to achieve this.

Though frankly, I wonder what your real problem is, as I'd guess there is a more standard solution then attempting to change the process name.

Your best option is something like launch4j http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/

There is a bug logged in the sun bugtracker for this, but it's not high priority http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6299778

There are mainly 2 approaches: one is as already described: using tools like Launch4j, WinRun4J to create native Windows launchers.

Another approach that seems better is to use Apache Procrun to wrap the java application as a Windows service. During the install service process, we can give the process an meaningful name such as OurApp.exe.

All we need do is rename prunsrv.exe to OurApp.exe and replace every occurrence of prunsrv.exe in our install|start|stop|uninstall service scripts to MyApp.exe.

See more from Using Apache Procrun to Rename Process Name of a Java Program in Windows

If you want to use a different process name you'll have to create your own binary to launch your Java application using something like JSmooth.

Look at this question for a discussion of creating such binaries.

That's because Java applications aren't actually executable they're ran by the Java virtual machine which is why java appears in the process monitor, it's the host of your application.

Things like LimeWire however do but I think that's more down to GCJ - http://gcc.gnu.org/java/