Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Lists all listening ports together with the PID of the associated process

Terminal - Lists all listening ports together with the PID of the associated process
netstat -tlnp
2009-02-15 14:20:25
User: fulat2k
Functions: netstat
179
Up
Down
Lists all listening ports together with the PID of the associated process

The PID will only be printed if you're holding a root equivalent ID.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 8 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
lsof -Pan -i tcp -i udp
2010-06-07 15:22:44
User: atoponce
Tags: netstat lsof
25
Up
Down
Lists all listening ports together with the PID of the associated process

This command is more portable than it's cousin netstat. It works well on all the BSDs, GNU/Linux, AIX and Mac OS X. You won't find lsof by default on Solaris or HPUX by default, but packages exist around the web for installation, if needed, and the command works as shown. This is the most portable command I can find that lists listening ports and their associated pid.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
netstat -plnt
2011-09-30 19:56:32
User: DopeGhoti
Functions: netstat
Tags: netstat lsof networking
7
Up
Down
check open ports (both ipv4 and ipv6)

While `lsof` will work, why not use the tool designed explicitly for this job?

(If not run as root, you will only see the names of PID you own)

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
netstat -nptl
2009-12-11 10:23:43
User: sputnick
Functions: netstat
2
Up
Down
List all TCP opened ports on localhost in LISTEN mode

Alternative of OJM snippet :

This one show the IP too, where ports bind. It's very important, because if there's only 127.0.0.1 instead of 0.0.0.0, connections from internet are rejected.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
netstat -anpe
2011-12-06 18:27:09
User: anarcat
Functions: netstat
Tags: Network status diagnostic
1
Up
Down
Lists all listening ports together with the PID of the associated process

Lists all opened sockets (not only listeners), no DNS resolution (so it's fast), the process id and the user holding the socket.

Previous samples were limiting to TCP too, this also lists UDP listeners.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
netstat -tunlp
2010-06-07 13:26:05
User: ender_x
Functions: netstat
Tags: netstat
-2
Up
Down
Lists all listening ports together with the PID of the associated process

Shows you all listening tcp/udp ports, and what program has them open(depending on rights)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

BSD equivalent:

sockstat -l4

(that's a small L)

Comment by lme 246 weeks and 6 days ago

for german users there is a simple way to remember a similar command:

netstat -tulpen

(tulpen = tulips in german)

Comment by Hollow 244 weeks and 2 days ago

I prefer:

netstat -paten

also easy to remember :-) and gives not only listening ports, but also running processes and their owning users

p.s. mnemonic of course is

netstat -patent

but 2nd t is simply redundant

Comment by vleolml 239 weeks and 3 days ago

Following will also show UDP sockets:

netstat -tulnp
Comment by realist 225 weeks and 2 days ago

lsof -Pan -i tcp -i udp

Comment by solarislackware 210 weeks ago

not for OS-X :(

Comment by ab 198 weeks and 2 days ago

In OS-X I am using a little script: http://gist.github.com/330338

Comment by nuxlli 195 weeks and 6 days ago

the switches in this command are gnu-specific. likely, the gnu netstat won't be running on any other operating systems than linux-based ones. a better utility that is more portable is lsof, as @solarislackware pointed out.

Comment by atoponce 183 weeks and 3 days ago

Best to run:

# netstat -plntu

This way you see UDP conns too.

Comment by kernel01 17 weeks and 3 days ago

Your point of view

You must be signed in to comment.

Related sites and podcasts