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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2026.1

# Enable process monitoring

Server process monitoring requires minimal system resources, but you must enable process monitoring for `p4 monitor` to work.

For example, to monitor active commands, set the `monitor` configurable to `1`:

    p4 configure set monitor=1

To include idle processes, set to a value higher than 1.

Valid values for the monitor configurable are:

- 0: Server process monitoring off. (Default)
- 1: monitor active commands
- 2: active commands and idle connections
- 3: same as `2`, but also includes connections that failed to initialize (stuck at the Init() phase)
- 5: same as `3`, but also includes a list of the files locked by the command for more than one second
- 10: same as `5`, but also includes lock wait times
- 25: same as `10`, except that the list of files locked by the command includes files locked for any duration

Setting monitor to a valid non-zero value activates db.monitor.interval. For example,

1. Set a valid non-zero value for monitor, such as `p4 configure set monitor=1`
2. (Optional): If you want a different monitoring interval than the default 30 seconds, set `db.monitor.interval` with a command such as `p4 configure set db.monitor.interval=120`

The command `p4 monitor -ael` includes

- The command arguments (-a)
- The environment (-e)
- The long-form output (-l), including the username and argument list.

If your rejected client version still appears in the output, ensure the rejectList setting is correct. See Reject client connection requests.

Regarding `5`, `10`, or `25`, for Linux and macOS systems, see the p4 monitor topic on the `-L` option. Microsoft Windows does not have the `lsof` utility to list open files, so `5`, `10`, or `25` are not relevant to Windows.

See also Terminate blocked processes.

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