Use `ss` To Determine What Process Is Using a Port

Here’s the situation: You need to determine what process is listening on a specific network port. The port could be used for TCP, UDP or other network protocol.

Solution

Use the ss command to determine which ports are in use, then narrow the output by the port.

Procedure

In this example, the port in question will be 1313. It will be used in the commands shown. Replace this value with the port of interest in the specific use case.

Step 1. Run ss with the appropriate expression

sudo ss  -l -p -n "sport = 1313"

State       Recv-Q      Send-Q   Local Address:Port  Peer Address:Port Process
LISTEN      0           4096     127.0.0.1:1313      0.0.0.0:*         users:(("hugo",pid=273360,fd=3))

The last column indicates the name of the command and its process id.

Reference

• ss man page