Caution
Grafana Agent has reached End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Agent is no longer receiving vendor support and will no longer receive security or bug fixes. Current users of Agent Static mode, Agent Flow mode, and Agent Operator should proceed with migrating to Grafana Alloy. If you have already migrated to Alloy, no further action is required. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.
This is documentation for the next version of Grafana Agent Documentation. For the latest stable release, go to the latest version.
discovery.process
BETA: This is a beta component. Beta components are subject to breaking changes, and may be replaced with equivalent functionality that cover the same use case.
discovery.process discovers processes running on the local Linux OS.
Note
To use the
discovery.processcomponent you must run Grafana Agent Flow as root and inside host PID namespace.
Usage
discovery.process "LABEL" {
}Arguments
The following arguments are supported:
Targets joining
If join is specified, discovery.process will join the discovered processes based on the __container_id__ label.
For example, if join is specified as follows:
[
{
"pod": "pod-1",
"__container_id__": "container-1"
},
{
"pod": "pod-2",
"__container_id__": "container-2"
}
]And the discovered processes are:
[
{
"__process_pid__": "1",
"__container_id__": "container-1"
},
{
"__process_pid__": "2"
}
]The resulting targets are:
[
{
"__container_id__": "container-1",
"__process_pid__": "1",
"pod": "pod-1"
},
{
"__process_pid__": "2"
},
{
"__container_id__": "container-1",
"pod": "pod-1"
},
{
"__container_id__": "container-2",
"pod": "pod-2"
}
]Blocks
The following blocks are supported inside the definition of
discovery.process:
discover_config block
The discover_config block describes which process metadata to discover.
The following arguments are supported:
Exported fields
The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:
Each target includes the following labels:
__process_pid__: The process PID.__meta_process_exe: The process executable path. Taken from/proc/<pid>/exe.__meta_process_cwd: The process current working directory. Taken from/proc/<pid>/cwd.__meta_process_commandline: The process command line. Taken from/proc/<pid>/cmdline.__meta_process_uid: The process UID. Taken from/proc/<pid>/status.__meta_process_username: The process username. Taken from__meta_process_uidandos/user/LookupID.__container_id__: The container ID. Taken from/proc/<pid>/cgroup. If the process is not running in a container, this label is not set.
Component health
discovery.process is only reported as unhealthy when given an invalid
configuration. In those cases, exported fields retain their last healthy
values.
Debug information
discovery.process does not expose any component-specific debug information.
Debug metrics
discovery.process does not expose any component-specific debug metrics.
Examples
Example discovering processes on the local host
discovery.process "all" {
refresh_interval = "60s"
discover_config {
cwd = true
exe = true
commandline = true
username = true
uid = true
container_id = true
}
}Example discovering processes on the local host and joining with discovery.kubernetes
discovery.kubernetes "pyroscope_kubernetes" {
selectors {
field = "spec.nodeName=" + env("HOSTNAME")
role = "pod"
}
role = "pod"
}
discovery.process "all" {
join = discovery.kubernetes.pyroscope_kubernetes.targets
refresh_interval = "60s"
discover_config {
cwd = true
exe = true
commandline = true
username = true
uid = true
container_id = true
}
}Compatible components
discovery.process can accept arguments from the following components:
- Components that export Targets
discovery.process has exports that can be consumed by the following components:
- Components that consume Targets
Note
Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.



