lsof VS nmon

Compare lsof VS nmon and see what are their differences

Rating: 0 reviews

Rating: 0 reviews

OutageDeck

Check the cloud and SaaS vendors your product depends on without opening every status page. Official-source timelines, observed uptime history, and alerts to email, Slack, Teams, Discord, or webhooks. Five-provider email alerts are free. sponsored

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, nmon seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 2 times since March 2021.

social mentions: 0 vs 2
Command Line Tools popularity: 20% vs 80%
alternatives listed: 22 vs 40

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

	l lsof	nmon
Website	people.freebsd.org	nmon.sourceforge.io
Listed in	Monitoring Tools Command Line Tools Performance Monitoring Accounting +1	Monitoring Tools Command Line Tools OS & Utilities Performance Monitoring +1

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

lsof 0 features

nmon 6 features

No features have been listed yet.

Comprehensive Performance Analysis
nmon provides detailed performance analysis for CPU, memory, disks, network, NFS, and other resources, offering a thorough overview of system performance.
Real-time Monitoring
It allows users to monitor system performance in real-time, which is essential for identifying immediate issues and performance bottlenecks.
Ease of Use
The tool is user-friendly with an interactive interface that can be easily navigated for quick access to performance data.
Minimal Overhead
nmon is lightweight and imposes minimal overhead on the system, ensuring that it does not significantly affect the performance metrics it records.
Historical Data Analysis
It can save performance data for later analysis, allowing users to review historical trends and patterns in system performance.
Cross-platform Availability
nmon is available on multiple Unix-based systems, including AIX and Linux, making it versatile for different environments.

Possible disadvantages

Limited Graphical Interface
nmon lacks advanced graphical visualization options, making it less suitable for users who prefer graphical data representation.
Complex Data Interpretation
The detailed and comprehensive data output can be complex to interpret for users who are not familiar with system performance metrics.
Manual Data Conversion Required
To generate graphical reports, users must export nmon data and process it with external tools like Excel or other analyzers, which adds extra steps.
Initial Learning Curve
New users might face a learning curve to fully understand and utilize all the capabilities and options available in nmon.
Limited to Unix-based Systems
As nmon is primarily designed for Unix-based systems, it cannot be used directly on non-Unix systems like Windows.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

lsof

nmon

Overall verdict

lsof (List Open Files) is a mature, battle-tested Unix/Linux utility that reliably reveals which files, sockets, and resources are opened by processes, making it an indispensable diagnostic tool for system administrators and developers.

Why this product is good

Provides comprehensive visibility into open files, network sockets, pipes, and devices tied to running processes
Extremely useful for troubleshooting 'device busy' errors, port conflicts, and locating processes holding onto deleted files
Highly portable across many Unix-like systems including FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, and Solaris
Long history of stable, well-maintained releases with extensive documentation and community support
Powerful filtering options let you query by user, process, port, file, or network connection

Recommended for

System administrators diagnosing resource and file-locking issues
Developers debugging network connections and socket usage
Security professionals investigating suspicious process activity and open network ports
Anyone needing to identify which process is using a specific file, directory, or port before unmounting or killing

No analysis of nmon yet.

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

lsof 2 videos + Add

nmon 3 videos + Add

8 Basic lsof Commands Every Sysadmin Needs to Know

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100

lsof

nmon

20% 20%

Command Line Tools

80% 80%

12% 12%

Monitoring Tools

88% 88%

100% 100%

Performance Monitoring

0% 0%

Tool

100% 100%

User comments

Share your experience with using lsof and nmon. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

lsof 0 mentions

nmon 2 mentions

Tracking lsof since Mar 2021.

Ask HN: Resources for Building a Webserver in C?
The tutorial has been moved to https://nmon.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php?n=Site.Nweb. Thanks for the share. - Source: Hacker News / almost 4 years ago
Slackware rice for my old dell laptop
Sorry for not being clear. I'm talking about this tool here: http://nmon.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php. Source: about 4 years ago

Alternatives to lsof and nmon

When comparing lsof and nmon, you can also consider the following products.

htop
htop - an interactive process viewer for Unix. This is htop, an interactive process viewer for Unix systems. It is a text-mode application (for console or X terminals) and requires ncurses. Latest release: htop 2.

Compare htop to lsof or nmon:

htop vs lsof htop vs nmon
psutil
psutil is a module providing an interface for retrieving information on all running processes and...

Compare psutil to lsof or nmon:

psutil vs lsof psutil vs nmon
Sysdig
Sysdig is an open source, system-level exploration that capture system state and activity from a running Linux instance, then save, filter and analyze.

Compare Sysdig to lsof or nmon:

Sysdig vs lsof Sysdig vs nmon
gtop
System monitoring dashboard for terminal

Compare gtop to lsof or nmon:

gtop vs lsof gtop vs nmon
v

vtop
vtop is a graphical command-line tool that uses unicode braille to chart CPU and memory usage.

Compare vtop to lsof or nmon:

vtop vs lsof vtop vs nmon
i

iftop
iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage.

Compare iftop to lsof or nmon:

iftop vs lsof iftop vs nmon