Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

nmon VS lsof

Compare nmon VS lsof and see what are their differences

nmon logo nmon

This systems administrator, tuner, benchmark tool gives you a huge amount of important performance...

lsof logo lsof

Lsof lists open files for running UNIX processes. It is a
  • nmon Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15
  • lsof Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-16

nmon features and specs

  • 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 of nmon

  • 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.

lsof features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Analysis of lsof

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

nmon videos

Nmon - Terminal-Based System Performance Monitor

More videos:

  • Review - Turbocharge nmon Analysis with onTune nmon Analyzer.
  • Review - NMON Performance Monitoring Tool for Linux Shell - BASH

lsof videos

8 Basic lsof Commands Every Sysadmin Needs to Know

More videos:

  • Review - HakTip - Network monitoring in Linux with lsof

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to nmon and lsof)
Monitoring Tools
88 88%
12% 12
Command Line Tools
80 80%
20% 20
Performance Monitoring
0 0%
100% 100
Tool
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, nmon seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 2 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

nmon mentions (2)

  • 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 / over 3 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

lsof mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of lsof yet. Tracking of lsof recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

psutil - psutil is a module providing an interface for retrieving information on all running processes and...

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.

gtop - System monitoring dashboard for terminal

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.

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

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