lsof and fuser¶
Let's say you plugged in a USB drive and starting working on some files, once you were done, you go and unmount the USB device and you're getting an error "Device or Resource Busy". How would you find out which files in the USB drive are still in use? There are actually two tools you can use for this:
lsof
Remember files aren't just text files, images, etc, they are everything on the system, disks, pipes, network sockets, devices, etc. To see what is in use by a process, you can use the lsof command (short for "list open files") this will show you a list of all the open files and their associated process.
mo:~$ lsof . COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME lxsession 1491 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . update-no 1796 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . nm-applet 1804 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . indicator 1809 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . xterm 2205 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . bash 2207 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . lsof 5914 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 . lsof 5915 mo cwd DIR 8,6 4096 131 .
Now I can see what processes are currently holding the device/file open. In our USB example, you can also kill these processes so we can unmount this pesky drive.
fuser
Another way to track a process is the fuser command (short for "file user"), this will show you information about the process that is using the file or the file user.
mo:~$ fuser -v .
USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/home/mo: mo 1491 ..c.. lxsession
mo 1796 ..c.. update-notifier
mo 1804 ..c.. nm-applet
mo 1809 ..c.. indicator-power
mo 2205 ..c.. xterm
mo 2207 ..c.. bash
We can see which processes are currently using our /home/mo directory. The lsof and fuser tools are very similar, familiarize yourself with these tools and try using them next time you need to track a file or process down.
Exercise¶
Read the manpages for lsof and fuser, there is a lot of information that we didn't cover that allows you to have greater flexibility with these tools.
Quiz Questions¶
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