Kudithipudi.Org

Quick howto on finding the list of files being accessed by a process in Linux. I needed to find this for troubleshooting an issue where a particular process was using an abnormally high percentage of CPU. I wanted to find out what this particular process was doing and accessing.

1. Find the process ID (pid) of the process you want to analyze by running

    ps -ef | grep NAME_OF_PROCESS 

2. Find the files the process is accessing at a given time by running

   sudo ls -l /proc/PROCESS_ID/fd 

For example, if I wanted to find the list of files being accessed by mysql, the process would look as such

 ps -ef | grep mysqld 

which would show the output as

samurai@samurai:~$ ps -ef | grep mysqld
mysql     3304     1  0 Feb04 ?        00:00:23 /usr/sbin/mysqld
samurai  23389 23374  0 14:57 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto mysqld

I can then find the list of files being used by mysql by running

 sudo ls -l /proc/3304/fd 

which would give me

lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 0 -> /dev/null
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 1 -> /var/log/mysql/error.log
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 10 -> socket:[4958]
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 11 -> /tmp/ibdu9WRh (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 12 -> socket:[4959]
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 14 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_term_relatio                        nships.MYI
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 15 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_postmeta.MYI
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 17 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_term_relatio                        nships.MYD
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 18 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_term_taxonom                        y.MYI
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 2 -> /var/log/mysql/error.log
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 20 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_postmeta.MYD
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 21 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_term_taxonom                        y.MYD
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 22 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_terms.MYI
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 23 -> /var/lib/mysql/blog/wp_terms.MYD
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 3 -> /var/lib/mysql/ibdata1
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 4 -> /tmp/ibvANyz7 (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 5 -> /tmp/ibonS0mU (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 6 -> /tmp/ibcKctaH (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 7 -> /tmp/ibB5DS5t (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 8 -> /var/lib/mysql/ib_logfile0
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Feb  7 15:00 9 -> /var/lib/mysql/ib_logfile1

Quick note for myself on fixing the default startup script provided by Jboss to work on CentOS. Thx to Shankar to finding the solution.

The default startup script (/$JBOSS_HOME/bin/jboss_init_redhat.sh) that Jboss provides does not work properly in CentOS. The start option works fine, but when you try to stop Jboss, it gives you a “No JBossas is currently running” message and quits.

Here’s a quick way to fix it. Edit the jboss_init_redhat.sh file and replace

JBOSSSCRIPT=$(echo $JBOSSSH | awk '{print $1}' | sed 's/\//\\\//g') 

with

JBOSSSCRIPT=$(echo $JBOSSSH | awk '{print $1}')

Quick tip to find out the clients connecting to a NFS server.

• Check the ports that NFS uses

 grep -i nfs /etc/services 

• Check the clients connecting to the server using the port from above

 netstat -an | grep 2049 

Say you have a directory with a bunch of sub directories and files and you want to see if all the files are owned by a particular user, you can use the following set of commands

ls DIRECTORY_PATH -l -R | awk {'print $3'} | grep -v USER_NAME

The set of commands do the following

• ls -l -R shows the list of files and directories
• awk prints the name of the owner of the file (it is the third column)
• grep shows only the lines where the owner name doesn’t match

And yeah.. this works in most variants of Linux .