Linux open files list

Linux / UNIX List Open Files for Process

H ow do I list all open files for a Linux or UNIX process using command line options? How can I show open files per process under Linux?

Both Linux and Unix-like operating systems come with various utilities to find out open files associated with the process.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	Yes
Requirements	None
Est. reading time	3 minutes

UNIX List Open Files For Process

First use the ps command command to get PID of process, enter:
$ ps -aef | grep $ ps -aef | grep httpd
Next pass this PID to pfiles command under Solaris Unix:
$ pfiles
$ pfiles 3533
See pfiles command documentation> for more information or type the following man command:
% man pfiles

FreeBSD list open files per process

On FreeBSD use the fstat command along with the ps command:
# ps aux | grep -i openvpn # filter outputs using the grep command #
# fstat -p
# fstat -p 1219
We can count open files count for openvpn process as follows using the wc command:
# fstat -p 1219 | grep -v ^USER | wc -l
The -p option passed to the fstat to report all files open by the specified process.

FreeBSD pstat command in action

Linux List Open Files For Process

First you need to find out PID of process. Simply use any one of the following command to obtain process id:
# ps aux | grep OR
$ ps -C -o pid=
For example, find out PID of firefox web-browser, enter:
$ ps -C firefox -o pid=
Output:

To list opne files for firefox process, enter:
$ ls -l /proc/7857/fd
Sample output:

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For privileged process use the sudo command and to count open files use the wc command on Linux as follows:
# Get process pid
sudo ps -C Xorg -o pid
sudo ls -l /proc/$/fd
# Say pid is 9497 for Xorg, then
sudo ls -l /proc/9497/fd | wc -l
We can use bash for loop as follows too:

Listing Open Files on Linux

Using lsof to display the processes using the most file handles

The lsof command list open files under all Linux distributions or UNIX-like operating system. Type the following command to list open file for process ID 351:
$ lsof -p 351
In this example display and count all open files for top 10 processes on Linux operating systems or server:
# lsof | awk ‘‘ | sort | uniq -c | sort -r | head
## force numeric sort by passing the ‘-n’ option to the sort ##
# lsof | awk ‘‘ | sort | uniq -c | sort -r -n | head

• lsof – Run the lsof to display all open files and send output to the awk
• awk ‘‘ – Display first field i.e. process name only
• uniq -c – Omit duplicate lines while prefix lines by the number of occurrences
• sort -r – Reverse sort
• head – Display top 10 process along with open files count

Conclusion

Now you know how to find open files per process on Linux, FreeBSD, and Unix-like systems using various command-line options. See how to increase the system-wide/user-wide number of available (open) file handles on Linux for more information.

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Linux: Find Out How Many File Descriptors Are Being Used

W hile administrating a box, you may wanted to find out what a processes is doing and find out how many file descriptors (fd) are being used. You will surprised to find out that process does open all sort of files:
=> Actual log file

=> Library files /lib /lib64

=> Executables and other programs etc

In this quick post, I will explain how to to count how many file descriptors are currently in use on your Linux server system.

Step # 1 Find Out PID

To find out PID for mysqld process, enter:
# ps aux | grep mysqld
OR
# pidof mysqld
Output:

Step # 2 List File Opened By a PID # 28290

Use the lsof command or /proc/$PID/ file system to display open fds (file descriptors), run:
# lsof -p 28290
# lsof -a -p 28290
OR
# cd /proc/28290/fd
# ls -l | less
You can count open file, enter:
# ls -l | wc -l

Tip: Count All Open File Handles

To count the number of open file handles of any sort, type the following command:
# lsof | wc -l
Sample outputs:

List File Descriptors in Kernel Memory

Type the following command:
# sysctl fs.file-nr
Sample outputs:

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1. 1020 The number of allocated file handles.
2. 0 The number of unused-but-allocated file handles.
3. 70000 The system-wide maximum number of file handles.

You can use the following to find out or set the system-wide maximum number of file handles:
# sysctl fs.file-max
Sample outputs:

More about /proc/PID/file & procfs File System

/proc (or procfs) is a pseudo-file system that it is dynamically generated after each reboot. It is used to access kernel information. procfs is also used by Solaris, BSD, AIX and other UNIX like operating systems. Now, you know how many file descriptors are being used by a process. You will find more interesting stuff in /proc/$PID/file directory:

• /proc/PID/cmdline : process arguments
• /proc/PID/cwd : process current working directory (symlink)
• /proc/PID/exe : path to actual process executable file (symlink)
• /proc/PID/environ : environment used by process
• /proc/PID/root : the root path as seen by the process. For most processes this will be a link to / unless the process is running in a chroot jail.
• /proc/PID/status : basic information about a process including its run state and memory usage.
• /proc/PID/task : hard links to any tasks that have been started by this (the parent) process.

See also: /proc related FAQ/Tips

/proc is an essentials file system for sys-admin work. Just browser through our previous article to get more information about /proc file system:

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How to use the Linux ‘lsof’ command to list open files

Linux “open files” FAQ: Can you share some examples of how to show open files on a Linux system (i.e., how to use the lsof command)?

lsof command background

The Linux lsof command lists information about files that are open by processes running on the system. The lsof command is an acronym for, “list of open files.” In this article I’ll share some lsof command examples.

I assume you’re logged in as root

One other note: In these examples I’ll assume that you’re logged in as the Unix/Linux root user. If not, you’re lsof command output may be significantly limited. If you’re logged in as a non-root user, either su to root, or use sudo to run these commands.

Basic Linux lsof command examples

Typing the lsof command by itself lists all open files belonging to all active processes on the system:

On my current macOS system, which has been running for a long time, this shows a lot of open files, 1,582 to be specific:

Note that I didn’t have to be logged in as the root user to see this information on my Mac system.

Adding the head command to lsof shows what some of this output looks like:

Common lsof options

As mentioned, these details go on for 1,582 lines, so it helps to have some way to weed through that output, whether that involves using the grep command, or some of the lsof options shown below.

This command lists all open files belonging to PID (process ID) 11925 :

This command lists all open files belonging to processes owned by the user named «al»:

This command lists files that are open in the directory specified, but it does not descend into sub-directories:

The next command lists files that are open in the directory specified, and also descends into sub-directories. Beware: this can take a very long time to run for large directory structures:

Summary: Linux lsof command examples

I hope these Linux lsof command examples have been helpful. As you can see, the lsof command can be used to generate a list of open files on your Unix and Linux system with a variety of different command line options for different circumstances.

For more information on the lsof command, please see the «Related» block on this page, follow this link to lsof command search results on this website, or leave a note in the Comments section below.

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15 Linux lsof Command Examples (Identify Open Files)

lsof stands for List Open Files.

It is easy to remember lsof command if you think of it as “ls + of”, where ls stands for list, and of stands for open files.

It is a command line utility which is used to list the information about the files that are opened by various processes. In unix, everything is a file, ( pipes, sockets, directories, devices, etc.). So by using lsof, you can get the information about any opened files.

1. Introduction to lsof

Simply typing lsof will provide a list of all open files belonging to all active processes.

By default One file per line is displayed. Most of the columns are self explanatory. We will explain the details about couple of cryptic columns (FD and TYPE).

FD – Represents the file descriptor. Some of the values of FDs are,

• cwd – Current Working Directory
• txt – Text file
• mem – Memory mapped file
• mmap – Memory mapped device
• NUMBER – Represent the actual file descriptor. The character after the number i.e ‘1u’, represents the mode in which the file is opened. r for read, w for write, u for read and write.

TYPE – Specifies the type of the file. Some of the values of TYPEs are,

• REG – Regular File
• DIR – Directory
• FIFO – First In First Out
• CHR – Character special file

For a complete list of FD & TYPE, refer man lsof.

2. List processes which opened a specific file

You can list only the processes which opened a specific file, by providing the filename as arguments.

3. List opened files under a directory

You can list the processes which opened files under a specified directory using ‘+D’ option. +D will recurse the sub directories also. If you don’t want lsof to recurse, then use ‘+d’ option.

4. List opened files based on process names starting with

You can list the files opened by process names starting with a string, using ‘-c’ option. -c followed by the process name will list the files opened by the process starting with that processes name. You can give multiple -c switch on a single command line.

5. List processes using a mount point

Sometime when we try to umount a directory, the system will say “Device or Resource Busy” error. So we need to find out what are all the processes using the mount point and kill those processes to umount the directory. By using lsof we can find those processes.

The following will also work.

6. List files opened by a specific user

In order to find the list of files opened by a specific users, use ‘-u’ option.

Sometimes you may want to list files opened by all users, expect some 1 or 2. In that case you can use the ‘^’ to exclude only the particular user as follows

The above command listed all the files opened by all users, expect user ‘lakshmanan’.

7. List all open files by a specific process

You can list all the files opened by a specific process using ‘-p’ option. It will be helpful sometimes to get more information about a specific process.

8. Kill all process that belongs to a particular user

When you want to kill all the processes which has files opened by a specific user, you can use ‘-t’ option to list output only the process id of the process, and pass it to kill as follows

The above command will kill all process belonging to user ‘lakshmanan’, which has files opened.

Similarly you can also use ‘-t’ in many ways. For example, to list process id of a process which opened /var/log/syslog can be done by

Talking about kill, did you know that there are 4 Ways to Kill a Process?

9. Combine more list options using OR/AND

By default when you use more than one list option in lsof, they will be ORed. For example,

The above command uses two list options, ‘-u’ and ‘-c’. So the command will list process belongs to user ‘lakshmanan’ as well as process name starts with ‘init’.

But when you want to list a process belongs to user ‘lakshmanan’ and the process name starts with ‘init’, you can use ‘-a’ option.

The above command will not output anything, because there is no such process named ‘init’ belonging to user ‘lakshmanan’.

10. Execute lsof in repeat mode

lsof also support Repeat mode. It will first list files based on the given parameters, and delay for specified seconds and again list files based on the given parameters. It can be interrupted by a signal.

Repeat mode can be enabled by using ‘-r’ or ‘+r’. If ‘+r’ is used then, the repeat mode will end when no open files are found. ‘-r’ will continue to list,delay,list until a interrupt is given irrespective of files are opened or not.

Each cycle output will be separated by using ‘=======’. You also also specify the time delay as ‘-r’ | ‘+r’.

In the above output, for the first 5 seconds, there is no output. After that a script named “inita.sh” is started, and it list the output.

Finding Network Connection

Network connections are also files. So we can find information about them by using lsof.

11. List all network connections

You can list all the network connections opened by using ‘-i’ option.

You can also use ‘-i4’ or ‘-i6’ to list only ‘IPV4’ or ‘IPV6‘ respectively.

12. List all network files in use by a specific process

You can list all the network files which is being used by a process as follows

You can also use the following

The above command will list the network files opened by the processes starting with ssh.

13. List processes which are listening on a particular port

You can list the processes which are listening on a particular port by using ‘-i’ with ‘:’ as follows

14. List all TCP or UDP connections

You can list all the TCP or UDP connections by specifying the protocol using ‘-i’.

15. List all Network File System ( NFS ) files

You can list all the NFS files by using ‘-N’ option. The following lsof command will list all NFS files used by user ‘lakshmanan’.

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