lsof is so slow on Mojave. Any alternatives or improvements?

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bernuli Author

Level 1

69 points

lsof is so slow on Mojave. Any alternatives or improvements?

Regarding https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250297792

lsof also slow for me in Mojave.

At first I thought it was a problem with macOS 10.14. But I think the issue is with lsof itself.

The newer version of lsof included with Catalina, 4.91, it is MUCH faster.

Mojave comes with lsof 4.89

Catalina comes with lsof 4.9.1

(also, for reference, High Sierra comes with lsof 4.89)

Here are the 2 lsof versions run on same machine 10.14.6 (18G3020),

4.89

time lsof | wc -l
    4472

real	0m14.250s
user	0m0.101s
sys	0m14.086s

4.9.1

time /usr/local/lsof4.9.1 | wc -l
    4474

real	0m0.197s
user	0m0.075s
sys	0m0.114s

I will still default to 4.89 as that is what came with Mojave, but I have 4.91 unhand for troubleshooting.

Hope this helps some peeps.

Bernuli

Posted on Feb 23, 2020 11:09 AM

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Answer 1

bernuli Author

Level 1

69 points

Feb 23, 2020 7:05 PM in response to John Galt

John,

Thanks for posting. That looks reasonable to me given the user and system times are much less than real time. Also fair number of open files to sift through. Possibly lsof -n would be faster for you real time.

Bernuli

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Answer 2

BobHarris

Level 9

56,807 points

Feb 23, 2020 11:26 AM in response to bernuli

I tried Homebrew lsof 4.93.2

brew install lsof

and it ran slower than then the Mojave lsof

time /usr/local/opt/lsof/bin/lsof | wc -l # home brew installed 4.92.2
   10557

real	0m50.151s
user	0m0.254s
sys	0m26.017s

time lsof | wc -l  # native Mojave lsof
   10551

real	0m39.919s
user	0m0.225s
sys	0m24.049s

So I would conclude it is not the newer version, but something Apple did to their version, such as taking advantage of macOS kernel features that the older Mojave version did not, and that the Open Source version does not either.

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Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

155,234 points

Feb 23, 2020 12:54 PM in response to bernuli

iMac17:~ john$ time lsof | wc -l
   11378

real	0m10.261s
user	0m0.149s
sys	0m0.138s
iMac17:~ john$

lsof 4.91

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Answer 4

BobHarris

Level 9

56,807 points

Feb 23, 2020 11:31 AM in response to bernuli

I do not have Catalina. I am not going to upgrade to Catalina, unless I happen to buy a new Mac and it comes with Catalina. I am going to wait until 10.16 which will give everyone time to work out all the 32-bit apps cannot run issues, the boot partition is read-only issues, etc...

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Answer 5

bernuli Author

Level 1

69 points

Feb 23, 2020 11:28 AM in response to BobHarris

Would you mind trying 4.9.1 that comes with Catalina? I would like to know if this fix is just a fluke on my setup.

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lsof is so slow on Mojave. Any alternatives or improvements?

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