Linux check which ports are used

How to Check Which Ports Are in Use on Your Linux System

One step in securing a Linux computer system is identifying which ports are active. Your system’s active ports give you information about which outside applications may be connected to your system. You can also discover if you are unintentionally exposing an application or service to the internet, like a MySQL database. There are several Linux tools that help you discover which ports are in use and identify both ends of active communications. This guide introduces three common tools you can use find the active ports on your Linux server or computer with links to guides that dive deeper into each tool.

What is a Port in Computer Networking?

Service names and port numbers are used to distinguish between different services that run over transport protocols. Common transport protocols are TCP, UDP, DCCP, and SCTP. These protocols enable communication between applications by establishing a connection and ensuring data is transmitted successfully. Well-known port assignments, such as HTTP at port 80 over TCP and UDP, are listed at the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry. These port assignments help distinguish different types of network traffic across the same connection.

Which Linux System Ports Are in Use?

Three tools to help you check ports in use on a Linux system are:

• netstat: This tool shows your server’s network status.
• ss: You can view socket statistics with the ss tool. For example, ss allows you to monitor TCP, UDP, and UNIX sockets.
• lsof: This Linux utility lists open files. Since everything on a Linux system can be considered a file, lsof provides a lot of information on your entire system.

Using netstat

This tool is great for inspecting the following areas of your Linux system:

• Unix sockets and network connections
• Routing tables
• Network interfaces
• Network protocols
• Multicast group membership

Running netstat without any options displays all open sockets and network connections, which can generate a lot of output. You can control the output using netstat’s command-line options. For example, to view the PID and program name for a system’s listening TCP connections, run netstat with the following command-line options:

The output resembles the following:

To learn how to install netstat, interpret its output, and view common command line options, see our Inspecting Network Information with netstat guide.

Using ss

The ss tool was created to improve upon netstat and provides more functionality. It allows you to monitor TCP, UDP, and UNIX sockets. A socket enables programs to communicate with each other across a network and is comprised of an IP address and a port number.

Running the ss with no options displays TCP, UDP, and UNIX sockets. Similar to netstat, restrict the ss command’s output by using command-line options. For example, to view all listening and non-listening TCP sockets issue the following command:

The output resembles the following:

To take a deeper dive into the ss tool, read our Learning to Use the ss Tool to its Full Potential guide. This guide provides commands specific to each protocol, commands to view general statistics about a system’s current connections, and ways to filter your output.

Using lsof

Since everything on a Linux system can be considered a file, the lsof tool can report on many aspects of a system, including open network interfaces and network connections. The lsof tool is preinstalled on many Linux distributions, so you may consider using it before a tool you need to install. One unique feature of the lsof tool is repeat mode*. This mode allows you to run the lsof command continuously on a timed interval. When inspecting your system to find information about which ports are in use, lsof can return information about which user and processes are using a specific port. For example, when working with a local development environment you may want to find which localhost ports are currently in use. Use the following command to retrieve this information:

The output returns a similar response:

To learn more about the lsof command read our How to List Open Files with lsof guide. This guide provides information about command-line options, the anatomy of the lsof output, and filtering your output with regular expressions.

This page was originally published on Thursday, February 25, 2021.

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How do I check if a port is in use on Linux?

I am a new Linux system user. I need to find out which process is listening on a port on Linux using the command line. How do you find out which process is listening on a port on Linux operating systems?

A network port in Linux is nothing but a number that identifies one side of a connection between two systems. All networked devices use port numbers to determine to which process a message should be delivered. The domain name and IP address are like a street address, and port numbers are like room numbers.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	Yes
Requirements	Linux
Est. reading time	2 minutes

Popular port numbers in Linux

• HTTP – TCP 80
• HTTPS – TCP 443
• POP3 – TCP 110
• SMTP – TCP 25
• SSH – TCP 22
• DNS/DOMAIN – TCP/UDP 53

Use the cat command or grep command/egrep command to query port numbers as follows:
cat /etc/services
grep -w 80 /etc/services
egrep -w ’53/(tcp|udp)’ /etc/services

How to check if a port is in use on Linux

The procedure is as follows:

1. Open the terminal application on Linux.
2. Type any one of the following command to check if a port is in use on Linux
   sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN
   sudo netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN
   sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :443
   sudo ss -tulpn | grep LISTEN
   sudo ss -tulpn | grep ‘:22’
3. Search for the TCP or UDP port description in /etc/services file on Linux:
   grep -E -w ‘PORT_NUMBER_HERE/(tcp|udp)’ /etc/services

Let us see some examples and sample commands in details.

How can you find out which process is listening on a port on Linux

Type the ss command or netstat command to see if a TCP port 443 is in use on Linux?
sudo netstat -tulpn | grep :443
sudo ss -tulpn | grep :443
If a port is open, you should see the output as follows:

The port 443 is in use and opened by nginx service. Where,

• -t : Display TCP sockets/port
• -u : Show UDP sockets/port
• -l : See only listening sockets i.e. open port
• -p : Also display process name that opened port/socket
• -n : View addresses and port numbers in numerical format. Do not use DNS to resolve names.

Getting a list of all open port in production

Simply run:
sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN
sudo ss -tulpn
sudo netstat -tulpn
Sample outputs:

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How to check if port is in use on Linux or Unix

H ow do I determine if a port is in use under Linux or Unix-like system? How can I verify which ports are listening on Linux server? How do I check if port is in use on Linux operating system using the CLI?

It is important you verify which ports are listening on the server’s network interfaces. You need to pay attention to open ports to detect an intrusion. Apart from an intrusion, for troubleshooting purposes, it may be necessary to check if a port is already in use by a different application on your servers. For example, you may install Apache and Nginx server on the same system. So it is necessary to know if Apache or Nginx is using TCP port # 80/443. This quick tutorial provides steps to use the netstat, nmap and lsof command to check the ports in use and view the application that is utilizing the port.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	Yes
Requirements	lsof, ss, and netstat on Linux
Est. reading time	3 minutes

How to check if port is in use in

To check the listening ports and applications on Linux:

1. Open a terminal application i.e. shell prompt.
2. Run any one of the following command on Linux to see open ports:
   sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN
   sudo netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN
   sudo ss -tulpn | grep LISTEN
   sudo lsof -i:22 ## see a specific port such as 22 ##
   sudo nmap -sTU -O IP-address-Here
3. For the latest version of Linux use the ss command. For example, ss -tulw

Let us see commands and its output in details.

Option #1: lsof command

The syntax is:
$ sudo lsof -i -P -n
$ sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN
$ doas lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN ### [OpenBSD] ###
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: Check the listening ports and applications with lsof command

Option #2: netstat command

You can check the listening ports and applications with netstat as follows.

Linux netstat syntax

Run netstat command along with grep command to filter out port in LISTEN state:
$ netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN
The netstat command deprecated for some time on Linux. Therefore, you need to use the ss command as follows:
sudo ss -tulw
sudo ss -tulwn
sudo ss -tulwn | grep LISTEN

Where, ss command options are as follows:

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• -t : Show only TCP sockets on Linux
• -u : Display only UDP sockets on Linux
• -l : Show listening sockets. For example, TCP port 22 is opened by SSHD server.
• -p : List process name that opened sockets
• -n : Don’t resolve service names i.e. don’t use DNS

FreeBSD/MacOS X netstat syntax

$ netstat -anp tcp | grep LISTEN
$ netstat -anp udp | grep LISTEN

OpenBSD netstat syntax

$ netstat -na -f inet | grep LISTEN
$ netstat -nat | grep LISTEN

Option #3: nmap command

The syntax is:
$ sudo nmap -sT -O localhost
$ sudo nmap -sU -O 192.168.2.13 ##[ list open UDP ports ]##
$ sudo nmap -sT -O 192.168.2.13 ##[ list open TCP ports ]##
Sample outputs:

Fig.02: Determines which ports are listening for TCP connections using nmap

A note about Windows users

You can check port usage from Windows operating system using following command:
netstat -bano | more
netstat -bano | grep LISTENING
netstat -bano | findstr /R /C:»[LISTEING]»

Conclusion

This page explained command to determining if a port is in use on Linux or Unix-like server. For more information see the nmap command and lsof command page online here

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How to Check for Open Ports in Linux

When you are troubleshooting networking issues in Linux or are looking for ways to improve the security of your Linux machine, you will need to know if and which ports are open. In this article we will look at different ways to list or display open ports in Linux.

What is a Port?

A port is a 16-bit number (0 to 65535) to help identify a given application or process on a Linux (Unix) operating system. Port differentiates one application from another on a Linux system.

Below are the different categories of ports:

• 0 – 1023 – Referred to as Well Known Ports
• 1024 – 49151 –Referred to as Registered Ports
• 49152 – 65535 – Referred to as Dynamic Ports

Using the following command, a list of applications and ports is displayed on your terminal:

TCP: TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol. It is the most commonly-used protocol on the Internet. TCP is not just one-way communication, rather it sends packets back to acknowledge it’s received your packets.

UDP: Also known as User Datagram Protocol. It is an alternative communications protocol to TCP. The UDP protocol works similar to TCP. However, it ignores all error-checking stuff. UDP is necessary when speed is desirable and error correction is not needed.

SOCKETS: Socket allows communication from two different processes on the same or different machines.

Let’s look at different ways to list an open port in Linux.

1. Netstat

In this method we will use the command netstat -atu to check for open ports in Linux.

We used the -a , -t and -u flags for netstat.

• -a: shows all sockets
• -t: shows TCP connections
• -u: shows UDP connections

You can also add the -p flag to show related PID of the process or program name.

To display only UDP ports, you can use the following command:

Also, you can use the following command to search for TCP ports:

2. lsof

Instead of using netstat, we can use the lsof command to display open ports in Linux:

The following command can also help to display open sockets:

Also, you can use the command below to list all TCP connections:

Moreover, you can use the following command for UDP connections:

3. Network Mapped Command

In this method we will use nmap to detect the open port on your system. We can use the following command to show tcp port connections:

Finally, to show udp port connections, we can use the following command:

Conclusion

When it comes to the security of your Linux PC, the first thing to do is to close all unnecessary ports to prevent external access. With the methods listed above, you will be able to easily check for open ports on a Linux system and determine which ports should be closed or remain open.

Michael wears many hat in the opensource industry. He is based in Accra, Ghana. He revels in anything Linux and Devops.

2 comments

“the first thing to do is to close all unnecessary ports”
The $64,000 question is How do I determine whether a port is unnecessary?

Those services which are not really being used we should shut them down like say postfix, httpd if that machine is db server we intend to use only say mysql db on it then there is not need to keep other service on it.

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