The answer is
This did what I needed.
ps -eaf | grep `lsof -t -i:$PORT`
On macOS, here's an easy way to get the process ID that's listening on a specific port with netstat. This example looks for a process serving content on port 80:
find server running on port 80
netstat -anv | egrep -w [.]80.*LISTEN
sample output
tcp4 0 0 *.80 *.* LISTEN 131072 131072 715 0
The 2nd from the last column is the PID. In above, it's 715.
options
-a - show all ports, including those used by servers
-n - show numbers, don't look up names. This makes the command a lot faster
-v - verbose output, to get the process IDs
-w - search words. Otherwise the command will return info for ports 8000 and 8001, not just "80"
LISTEN - give info only for ports in LISTEN mode, i.e. servers
On the latest macOS version you can use this command:
lsof -nP -i4TCP:$PORT | grep LISTEN
If you find it hard to remember then maybe you should create a bash function and export it with a friendlier name like so
vi ~/.bash_profile
and then add the following lines to that file and save it.
function listening_on() {
lsof -nP -i4TCP:"$1" | grep LISTEN
}
Now you can type listening_on 80 in your Terminal and see which process is listening on port 80.
I am a Linux guy. In Linux it is extremely easy with netstat -ltpn or any combination of those letters. But in Mac OS X netstat -an | grep LISTEN is the most humane. Others are very ugly and very difficult to remember when troubleshooting.
This is a good way on macOS High Sierra:
netstat -an |grep -i listen
Update January 2016
Really surprised no-one has suggested:
lsof -i :PORT_NUMBER
to get the basic information required. For instance, checking on port 1337:
lsof -i :1337
Other variations, depending on circumstances:
sudo lsof -i :1337
lsof -i tcp:1337
You can easily build on this to extract the PID itself. For example:
lsof -t -i :1337
which is also equivalent (in result) to this command:
lsof -i :1337 | awk '{ print $2; }' | head -n 2 | grep -v PID
Quick illustration:
For completeness, because frequently used together:
To kill the PID:
kill -9 <PID>
# kill -9 60401
or as a one liner:
kill -9 $(lsof -t -i :1337)
Since Snow Leopard, up to Catalina and Big Sur, every version of macOS supports this:
sudo lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P
Personally I've end up with this simple function in my ~/.bash_profile:
listening() {
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
sudo lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P
elif [ $# -eq 1 ]; then
sudo lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P | grep -i --color $1
else
echo "Usage: listening [pattern]"
fi
}
Then listening command gives you a listing of processes listening on some port and listening smth greps this for some pattern.
Having this, it's quite easy to ask about particular process, e.g. listening dropbox, or port, e.g. listening 22.
lsof command has some specialized options for asking about port, protocol, process etc. but personally I've found above function much more handy, since I don't need to remember all these low-level options. lsof is quite powerful tool, but unfortunately not so comfy to use.
lsof -n -i | awk '{ print $1,$9; }' | sort -u
This displays who's doing what. Remove -n to see hostnames (a bit slower).
For the LISTEN, ESTABLISHED and CLOSED ports
sudo lsof -n -i -P | grep TCP
For the LISTEN ports only
sudo lsof -n -i -P | grep LISTEN
For a specific LISTEN port, ex: port 80
sudo lsof -n -i -P | grep ':80 (LISTEN)'
Or if you just want a compact summary [no service/apps described], go by NETSTAT. The good side here is, no sudo needed
netstat -a -n | grep 'LISTEN '
Explaining the items used:
-n suppress the host name
-i for IPv4 and IPv6 protocols
-P omit port names
-a [over netstat] for all sockets
-n [over netstat] don't resolve names, show network addresses as numbers
Tested on High Sierra 10.13.3 and Mojave 10.14.3
- the last syntax netstat works on linux too
For macOS I use two commands together to show information about the processes listening on the machine and process connecting to remote servers. In other words, to check the listening ports and the current (TCP) connections on a host you could use the two following commands together
1. netstat -p tcp -p udp
2. lsof -n -i4TCP -i4UDP
Thought I would add my input, hopefully it can end up helping someone.
This works in Mavericks (OSX 10.9.2).
sudo lsof -nP -iTCP:$PORT -sTCP:LISTEN
Inspired by user Brent Self:
lsof -i 4 -a | grep LISTEN
I made a small script to see not only who is listening where but also to display established connections and to which countries. Works on OSX Siera
#!/bin/bash
printf "\nchecking established connections\n\n"
for i in $(sudo lsof -i -n -P | grep TCP | grep ESTABLISHED | grep -v IPv6 |
grep -v 127.0.0.1 | cut -d ">" -f2 | cut -d " " -f1 | cut -d ":" -f1); do
printf "$i : " & curl freegeoip.net/xml/$i -s -S | grep CountryName |
cut -d ">" -f2 | cut -d"<" -f1
done
printf "\ndisplaying listening ports\n\n"
sudo lsof -i -n -P | grep TCP | grep LISTEN | cut -d " " -f 1,32-35
#EOF
Sample output
checking established connections
107.178.244.155 : United States
17.188.136.186 : United States
17.252.76.19 : United States
17.252.76.19 : United States
17.188.136.186 : United States
5.45.62.118 : Netherlands
40.101.42.66 : Ireland
151.101.1.69 : United States
173.194.69.188 : United States
104.25.170.11 : United States
5.45.62.49 : Netherlands
198.252.206.25 : United States
151.101.1.69 : United States
34.198.53.220 : United States
198.252.206.25 : United States
151.101.129.69 : United States
91.225.248.133 : Ireland
216.58.212.234 : United States
displaying listening ports
mysqld TCP *:3306 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP 127.0.0.1:12080 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP [::1]:12080 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP 127.0.0.1:12110 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP [::1]:12110 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP 127.0.0.1:12143 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP [::1]:12143 (LISTEN)
com.avast TCP 127.0.0.1:12995 (LISTEN)
com.avast [::1]:12995 (LISTEN)
com.avast 127.0.0.1:12993 (LISTEN)
com.avast [::1]:12993 (LISTEN)
Google TCP 127.0.0.1:34013 (LISTEN)
This may be useful to check if you are connected to north-korea! ;-)
On Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.8), running 'man lsof' yields:
lsof -i 4 -a
(actual manual entry is 'lsof -i 4 -a -p 1234')
The previous answers didn't work on Snow Leopard, but I was trying to use 'netstat -nlp' until I saw the use of 'lsof' in the answer by pts.
on OS X you can use the -v option for netstat to give the associated pid.
type:
netstat -anv | grep [.]PORT
the output will look like this:
tcp46 0 0 *.8080 *.* LISTEN 131072 131072 3105 0
The PID is the number before the last column, 3105 for this case
You can also use:
sudo lsof -i -n -P | grep TCP
This works in Mavericks.
Source: Stackoverflow.com