Splunk Enterprise Security

How to trace process tree/descendants

johnmccash
Explorer

I have windows and UNIX process start data in a logfile, including start time, process ID, and parent process ID. I want to be able to identify a specific process entry, and return all entries that are its descendants (children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc.), from the start time of the initial process to the present.

Because we're not tracking process termination, the reuse of a process ID, as indicated by a new process start event for one of the parent process IDs currently being traced, but without that new process's parent process ID being a different member of the set being traced, should result in removal of that new process ID from the trace set going forward from that point.

Got questions? Get answers!

Join the Splunk Community Slack to learn, troubleshoot, and make connections with fellow Splunk practitioners in real time!

Meet up IRL or virtually!

Join Splunk User Groups to connect and learn in-person by region or remotely by topic or industry.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

Catalog Is Now Generally Available on Splunk Cloud Platform

A Unified View of Your Data  Security logs, application events, business data, and historical telemetry often ...

Developer Spotlight with Eduard Lekanne

From Network Engineer to Building Agentic AI for Splunk Eduard Lekanne has been architecting technology ...

From Data Landing to Insight

Search Across More of Your Data Ecosystem The data you need may live in Splunk, high-volume machine data, ...