Linux check which port are used

How to check opened/closed ports on my computer?

@Justgivemeaname: nmap is a tool to check for open ports on another host. If you can run netstat on a machine, it’s much faster and reliable to use it.

@DavidFoerster: Didn’t know about netstat , so I learned that. It says in the link that it should be used from another host, though. Thanks!

8 Answers 8

There’s a few parameters to netstat that are useful for this :

• -l or —listening shows only the sockets currently listening for incoming connection.
• -a or —all shows all sockets currently in use.
• -t or —tcp shows the tcp sockets.
• -u or —udp shows the udp sockets.
• -n or —numeric shows the hosts and ports as numbers, instead of resolving in dns and looking in /etc/services.

You use a mix of these to get what you want. To know which port numbers are currently in use, use one of these:

netstat -atn # For tcp netstat -aun # For udp netstat -atun # For both 

In the output all port mentioned are in use either listening for incoming connection or connected to a peer** all others are closed. TCP and UDP ports are 16 bits wide (they go from 1-65535)

** They can also be connecting/disconnecting from the peer.

If it shows some process its used. Its closed(not used) if there is no output.

Another alternative command line easy to use to find out which process is using a port:

lsof -n -i4TCP:$PORT | grep LISTEN 

I added the next function in my .bash_profile,

and now run «pslisten 5060» to see who is grabing my SIP port.

It’s work with Apple Mac OS X too.

Is the port status «LISTENING» indicated that the port is opened?

Yes. It means that some service is listening to that port on your computer for incoming connection i.e. this port is open for establishing new connections.

Any port that are not shown in the output indicated that it’s closed?

Yes. Remember netstat -a will show all active (listening) and passive (non-listening) connections i.e. the ports that are acting as both server (some services are listening to these ports for connections from a different machine/process) and established (connections are established on these ports regardless of the fact the host/a service can be a server or client)

All TCP and UDP ports belong to a category called sockets and there are a whole lot of those. To view socket info you can check man ss .

Thanks. you wrote that -a means server and established. Does «server» means ports that are being listened at by some services? Does «established» mean ports where there are existing connections regardless of it is a client or server’s port? Then what kinds of ports does -a not show?

I don’t think the -a option means «all active» sockets; it just means «all». netstat shows all active sockets by default, but leaves out the passive sockets (open, listening). By using the -a option both active and passive sockets are shown.

@heemayl The second part of your answer is still not correct. A TCP socket in the «listening» state can never be a connection; it is not connected to anything, it is only listening. Listening TCP sockets are also called passive sockets because of this. If a client attempts to connect to a (listening) socket on a server, a new socket will be created on the server to establish a connection with the client. A socket which is part of an established connection is called an active socket.

Another option is ss. It’s much easier to use.

The below command will only output a list of current listening sockets.

root@server:~# ss -l Netid State Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address:Port Peer Address:Port u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 23353 * 23352 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 568 * 362 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 14836 * 14837 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 20446 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 22877 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 504 * 347 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 16298 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 23343 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 24125 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 24617 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 23352 * 23353 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 23334 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 17113 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 16957 * 369 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 14793 * 362 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 23345 * 362 u_dgr UNCONN 0 0 * 24070 * 369 udp UNCONN 0 0 *:sunrpc *:* udp UNCONN 0 0 *:981 *:* udp UNCONN 0 0 . sunrpc . * udp UNCONN 0 0 . 981 . * tcp LISTEN 0 128 127.0.0.1:85 *:* tcp LISTEN 0 128 *:ssh *:* tcp LISTEN 0 128 *:3128 *:* tcp LISTEN 0 100 127.0.0.1:smtp *:* tcp LISTEN 0 128 *:8006 *:* tcp LISTEN 0 128 *:sunrpc *:* tcp LISTEN 0 128 . ssh . * tcp LISTEN 0 100 ::1:smtp . * tcp LISTEN 0 128 . sunrpc . * 

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Check Which Process Is Using a Port on Linux

In computer networking, a port represents a logical entry and exit point for a connection. Ports are based on software and are entirely virtual. These ports on a computer are managed by the operating system.

What Will We Talk About?

This quick tutorial demonstrates the various methods to determine which Linux process or service is currently listening on a specific port. Let’s talk about ports and their purpose.

How Are Ports Analogous to Physical Ports?

Just as physical ports help to interact with various peripheral devices connected to a computer, ports help the different services to communicate with each other. These services can be on the same computer or on different computers.

A Bit About Port of a Service

To listen for incoming connection requests, a process associates itself with a port number. Most processes are set up with a default port, and they have to use that port as per their specification. They do not automatically switch to the other port unless their configuration is explicitly modified.

A few examples of protocols and their associated default ports include the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol (port22), the Apache HTTP (port80), the MySQL database server (port3306), and so forth. You may use this information to discover which default port does a service utilizes.

The config file of these services can be edited to use some other port as well.

Checking the Ports on Linux

Let’s now see how to check what port/ports a process is using on Linux. Here, we will show you the different commands for this purpose.

1. Lsof Command

The lsof utility is helpful to obtain a list of the ports which are used by your system. Let’s consider the following example to get an information about a process (processes) using the TCP port 22:

The lsof command gives more information like the user’s name and what process IDs are linked to each process. It works with both TCP and UDP ports.

2. SS Command

The ss command is another way to find out which processes are linked to a certain port. Although lsof is the more common abbreviation, some people may find ss to be more handy.

Let’s look for the processes or services that listen on port 3306:

Let’s break down this command:

1. t: It tells the ss command to display the TCP packets.

2. u: It tells the ss command to display the UDP packets.

3. n: It is used to display the port numbers instead of their translations.

4. a: It is used to display the listening as well as non-listening sockets of all types.

5. p: It is used to display the processes that utilize a socket.

The result of the previous command shows which process is utilizing which port. You may also issue the following command:

Here, sport signifies the source port.

These two approaches may help you find the IDs of the processes that are connected to different ports.

3. Netstat Command

The netstat command shows the information about your network and can be used to fix the problems or change the way that your network is set up. It can also keep a close watch on your network connections.

This command is often used to see an information about inbound and outbound connections, routing tables, port listening, and usage stats. Although it has been rendered obsolete in recent years, netstat is still a useful tool for analyzing networks.

With the grep command, netstat can determine which process or service is using a certain port (by mentioning the port):

The options used here can be classified as follows:

1. t: It only shows the TCP connection.

2. l: It is used to display the results in a list.

3. n: It displays addresses and port numbers in numerical format.

4. p: It displays the PID and program name which are associated with each socket.

4. Fuser Command

The fuser command determines the processes that utilize the files or sockets. You can use it to list the services which run on a specific port. Let’s take the example of port 3306 and see what services are running here:

This provides us with the process numbers using this port. You can use this process number to find the corresponding process names. For example, if the process number is 15809, the command to use here is as follows:

However, certain tools are required to identify the processes that utilize a non-standard port. “LSOF” is a tool for discovering what services are available on a network and what ports they use. Consider the following example. This shows how to list the UDP and TCP listening ports:

The following is a description of the options that are used here:

1. P: It suppresses the port service name lookup.

2. n: It displays the numeric network addresses.

3. i: It lists the IP sockets.

Both the ports and the associated processes are shown in the previously-mentioned result. This way is particularly useful for processes with non-default ports.

Conclusion

In this article, we talked about four possible Linux command-line tools and provided the examples on how to use them to find out which process is listening on a certain port.

About the author

Ali Imran Nagori

Ali imran is a technical writer and Linux enthusiast who loves to write about Linux system administration and related technologies. You can connect with him on LinkedIn
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3 Ways to Find Out Which Process Listening on a Particular Port

A port is a logical entity that represents an endpoint of communication and is associated with a given process or service in an operating system. In previous articles, we explained how to find out the list of all open ports in Linux and how to check if remote ports are reachable using the Netcat command.

In this short guide, we will show different ways of finding the process/service listening on a particular port in Linux.

1. Using netstat Command

netstat (network statistics) command is used to display information concerning network connections, routing tables, interface stats, and beyond. It is available on all Unix-like operating systems including Linux and also on Windows OS.

In case you do not have it installed by default, use the following command to install it.

$ sudo apt-get install net-tools [On Debian/Ubuntu & Mint] $ sudo dnf install net-tools [On CentOS/RHEL/Fedora and Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux] $ pacman -S netstat-nat [On Arch Linux] $ emerge sys-apps/net-tools [On Gentoo] $ sudo dnf install net-tools [On Fedora] $ sudo zypper install net-tools [On openSUSE]

Once installed, you can use it with the grep command to find the process or service listening on a particular port in Linux as follows (specify the port).

In the above command, the flags.

• l – tells netstat to only show listening sockets.
• t – tells it to display tcp connections.
• n – instructs it to show numerical addresses.
• p – enables showing of the process ID and the process name.
• grep -w – shows matching of exact string (:80).

Note: The netstat command is deprecated and replaced by the modern ss command in Linux.

2. Using lsof Command

lsof command (List Open Files) is used to list all open files on a Linux system.

To install it on your system, type the command below.

$ sudo apt-get install lsof [On Debian, Ubuntu and Mint] $ sudo yum install lsof [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux] $ sudo emerge -a sys-apps/lsof [On Gentoo Linux] $ sudo pacman -S lsof [On Arch Linux] $ sudo zypper install lsof [On OpenSUSE]

To find the process/service listening on a particular port, type (specify the port).

3. Using fuser Command

fuser command shows the PIDs of processes using the specified files or file systems in Linux.

You can install it as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install psmisc [On Debian, Ubuntu and Mint] $ sudo yum install psmisc [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux] $ sudo emerge -a sys-apps/psmisc [On Gentoo Linux] $ sudo pacman -S psmisc [On Arch Linux] $ sudo zypper install psmisc [On OpenSUSE]

You can find the process/service listening on a particular port by running the command below (specify the port).

Then find the process name using PID number with the ps command like so.

$ ps -p 2053 -o comm= $ ps -p 2381 -o comm=

You can also check out these useful guides about processes in Linux.

You might also like:

That’s all! Do you know of any other ways of finding the process/service listening on a particular port in Linux, let us know via the comment form below.

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