This article hasn't been updated for over 5 years. The information below may be obsolete.

pfiles versus lsof

Updated 25 Feb 2011 | 1 minute read | 3030 views | Solaris

On a great number of internal systems and especially at customer sites I see the lsof utility used over and over again. Whilst predominately used in the Linux world, lsof is also available on the Solaris platform.

However, for a quick check for open files you don't need to utilise the lsof within the Solaris operating environment. There is an useful little tool in the p*tools collection of tools called pfiles. pfiles prints all open files of a process by taking the PID of the process to specify the process.

For example:

# pfiles 214
214:    /usr/lib/inet/in.iked
  Current rlimit: 256 file descriptors
   0: S_IFDIR mode:0755 dev:102 ,0 ino:2 uid:0 gid:0 size:512 O_RDONLY | O_LARGEFILE
      /
   1: S_IFDIR mode:0755 dev:102 ,0 ino:2 uid:0 gid:0 size:512 O_RDONLY | O_LARGEFILE
      /
   2: S_IFDIR mode:0755 dev:102 ,0 ino:2 uid:0 gid:0 size:512 O_RDONLY | O_LARGEFILE
      /
   3: S_IFREG mode:0600 dev:102 ,0 ino:28994 uid:0 gid:0 size:47372 O_RDWR | O_APPEND | O_CREAT | O_LARGEFILE
      /var/log/in.iked.log
   4: S_IFSOCK mode:0666 dev:304 ,0 ino:48934 uid:0 gid:0 size:0 O_RDWR | O_NONBLOCK
      SOCK_RAW
      SO_SNDBUF (8192) , SO_RCVBUF (8192)
      sockname: AF_INET 10.10.1.201 port: 4500
      peername: AF_INET 10.10.1.201 port: 4500
   [..]
   10: S_IFDOOR mode:0777 dev:306 ,0 ino:0 uid:0 gid:0 size:0 O_RDWR FD_CLOEXEC door to in.iked [214]

Used with the xargs tool an even easier method to print out all open files on a given Solaris system:

# ps -ef -o pid | sort | xargs pfiles | more
0:sched
[ system process ]
/sbin/init
Current rlimit: 256 file descriptors
0: S_IFIFO mode:0600 dev:301 ,3 ino:448255748 uid:0 gid:0 size:0 O_RDWR | O_NDELAY
/var/run/initpipe
253: S_IFREG mode:0444 dev:298 ,1 ino:65538 uid:0 gid:0 size:0 O_RDONLY | O_LARGEFILE FD_CLOEXEC
/system/contract/process/pbundle
254: S_IFREG mode:0666 dev:298 ,1 ino:65539 uid:0 gid:0 size:0 O_RDWR | O_LARGEFILE FD_CLOEXEC
/system/contract/process/template
255: S_IFREG mode:0666 dev:298 ,1 ino:65539 uid:0 gid:0 size:0 O_RDWR | O_LARGEFILE FD_CLOEXEC
/system/contract/process/template
[...]

Note:This is not a tutorial, just a hint that I picked up somewhere from the net (if I find the original post I'll attribute the credit accordingly) from my toolbox.