{"id":237923,"date":"2026-05-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/i-used-one-linux-command-to-see-exactly-what-my-apps-were-doing-to-my-system\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T12:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:50:16","slug":"i-used-one-linux-command-to-see-exactly-what-my-apps-were-doing-to-my-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/i-used-one-linux-command-to-see-exactly-what-my-apps-were-doing-to-my-system\/","title":{"rendered":"I used one Linux command to see exactly what my apps were doing to my system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/used-one-linux-command-to-see-what-apps-were-doing-to-system\/\">I used one Linux command to see exactly what my apps were doing to my system<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/used-one-linux-command-to-see-what-apps-were-doing-to-system\/\">https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/used-one-linux-command-to-see-what-apps-were-doing-to-system\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-01 12:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.makeuseof.com\">www.makeuseof.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My laptop&#8217;s fan ran a bit harder than usual for a few days. It was consistent even when only my browser and text editor were open, and nothing visible seemed to trigger it. Using <strong>htop<\/strong> showed normal CPU and memory usage, but I knew something was off.<\/p>\n<p>I needed to see what the task manager wasn&#8217;t showing, so I used the <strong>lsof<\/strong> command. This command produced a live map of all open files and resources on the computer. The results were stunning and changed the way I think of the software I run.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"what-lsof-is\">\n                        What lsof is<br \/>\n               <\/h2>\n<h3 id=\"and-why-quot-list-open-files-quot-is-the-most-misleading-name-in-linux\">\n            And why &#8220;list open files&#8221; is the most misleading name in Linux<br \/>\n    <\/h3>\n<p>        Afam Onyimadu \/ MUO<\/p>\n<p> On Linux, files aren&#8217;t just documents in folders; they can be inter-process pipes, device nodes, or network sockets. This makes lsof&#8217;s list of open files a live map of everything the Linux system is touching. The tool is far more powerful than its name suggests.<\/p>\n<p>Your standard Linux installation already includes this tool; it may be absent on minimal installations of Ubuntu, Fedora, or Debian, but can be installed by running a single command:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n                                        Debian\/Ubuntu: sudo apt install lsof\n                        <\/li>\n<li>\n                                        Fedora\/RHEL: sudo dnf install lsof\n                        <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Running<strong> lsof <\/strong>produces an intimidating output, but you have to focus on these four columns to make any&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/used-one-linux-command-to-see-what-apps-were-doing-to-system\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used one Linux command to see exactly what my apps were doing to my&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.makeuseofimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/wm\/2026\/04\/lsof-hidden-connections-feature.jpg?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[91,97,71,79],"class_list":["post-237923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-debian","tag-fedora","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237925,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237923\/revisions\/237925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}