Method and apparatus for detecting a hung up and/or slow-running syscall without affecting the performance of the syscall. Before a syscall is started, a time stamp can be created at a memory address that is distinct from memory addresses to be used by the syscall. While a syscall thread handles the syscall operation, a separate monitor thread monitors the time stamp to track the length of time the syscall operation has been running. If the syscall thread operation exceeds a threshold time limit, then a flag can be sent to a network administrator to indicate that the syscall may be hung up and/or slow running.