Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Name

lsof

Synopsis

lsof [options] [pathname]

List open files, including regular files, directories, special files, libraries, network files, and others. The following descriptions and examples cover lsof’s basic operation; for a complete description, refer to lsof’s manpage.

Used without arguments, lsof will list all files opened by all active processes. Used with pathname, lsof will list the open files in the given file system mount point. If pathname is a file, lsof will list any processes having the given file open.

Selected Options

-a

Recognize all list options as joined with “and” instead of the default “or.”

-c chars

List files opened by processes whose command names begin with characters chars. chars can contain a regular expression if put between slashes (/). You can further define the expression by following the closing slash with b, to denote a basic expression, i to denote a case-insensitive expression, or x to denote an extended expression (the default).

+d pathname

List all open instances of the files and directories in pathname, including the directory pathname itself. This option does not search below the level of pathname, however.

+D pathname

List all open instances of the files and directories in pathname, including directory pathname itself, searching recursively to the full depth of directory pathname.

-i [ address ]

List all Internet files, or if specified, those with a Internet address matching address. Specify address as [protocol][@host][:port].

version ...