How to determine number of open sockets? VM Resource Issues

Question

I've got a MediaTemple DV server. I've been seeing a lot of QOS alerts for "numothersock" which is defined as:

The number of sockets other than TCP ones. Local (UNIX-domain) sockets are used for communications inside the system. UDP sockets are used, for example, for Domain Name Service (DNS) queries. UDP and other sockets may also be used in some very specialized applications (SNMP agents and others).

How can I determine what application/daemon/etc is creating these sockets? The limit is 300 and we're hitting that several times a day recently.

Thanks in advance.

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 16 '11 at 17:35

16

netstat -nap
p shows the process id

answered Jul 16 '11 at 17:35

silviud

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Please avoid `netstat -a` it will run dns name resolution, using `-np` is fine... – Roy Bellingan Nov 16 '15 at 13:52

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 25 '14 at 19:30

11

netstat -an | grep ESTABLISHED | wc -l

This will count all opened sockets in the system and will output just the total. You can of course also change ESTABLISHED for whatever you need, for example a port or a communication status like CONNECTED or LISTENING.

edited Sep 25 '14 at 19:30

b13n1u

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answered Sep 25 '14 at 15:19

Luis Parada

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`watch -n1 -d "netstat -an | grep ESTABLISHED | wc -l"` – sjas Sep 26 '16 at 14:47
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instead of `grep SOMETHING| wc -l`, you could use `grep -c SOMETHING` – Shiplu Mokaddim Sep 27 '16 at 12:06

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 07 '16 at 13:06

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To watch live MySQL opened connections through UNIX socket, run (as root):

watch -n1 'netstat -np | grep -i mysqld'

answered Sep 07 '16 at 13:06

stamster

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 31 '19 at 12:04

with `ss`

netstat is deprecated, its replacement is ss.

For your case, ss -pun might be useful that shows UDP (-u) sockets with process information (-p) and doesn't turn port numbers into service names (-n).

I use ss -ptln a lot whichs shows listening (-l) TCP sockets (-t).

It's useful with watch when you want to make sure your web application cleans up its TCP sockets:

watch ss -ptln

Here are some more examples with ss.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 16 '11 at 16:40

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netstat -a shows'em all. Or you can study its manual page to filter out only those types of connections you're interested in.

answered Jul 16 '11 at 16:40

poige

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Thanks guys! Appreciate it! In my case, it was BIND. I don't even need it running. Thanks a ton! – Encoderer Jul 16 '11 at 18:36

How to determine number of open sockets? VM Resource Issues

5 Answers5

with ss

with `ss`