What is this process?

[mayoko185]

I noticed my system keeps randomly locking up on my MBP, so I pulled up activity monitor. There is this process running under root called "lsof", and activity monitor wont let me quit or restart the process either (the option is grayed out). I googled "lsof" and I got "lsof is a command meaning "list open files", which is used in many Unix-like systems to report a list of all open files and the processes that opened them.". Ok... so how do I kill this process so my computer stops locking up?

[Peace]

Do you have any 3rd part utilities or application enhancers installed?

[devnill]

Maybe some kind of network service monitoring or security app? For the full explanation on what it can do type "man lsof" form the Terminal window.
Don't know if its worth writing a shell script wrapper to see when it is triggered in bash it writes a log entry. Its not running on my Tiger Installation I tried Activity Monitor and Cocktail both do not use lsof.:o

[angelwatt]

See if this discussion helps, http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=359949

[mayoko185]

Do you have any 3rd part utilities or application enhancers installed?

I have shapeshifter, but thats been installed for over a month now /w no isssues

also forgot to add per activity monitor lsof uses anywhere from 80-90% of my cpu, making everything else run slow or lock up temporarily.

See if this discussion helps, http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=359949

Looks like a very simular issue to mine, I havent installed any new wigets recently... I did updated istat pro but I closed it out and lsof is still running.

So what im gathering is something is invoking lsof and making it use up a whole lota cpu, is there a way to see whats using it?

[Peace]

What version of OSX are you running ?

[mayoko185]

tiger on my MBP (in sig)

[angelwatt]

...
Looks like a very simular issue to mine, I havent installed any new wigets recently... I did updated istat pro but I closed it out and lsof is still running.
...

There was another part I hoped you would try. When viewing the Activity Monitor you can switch to a hierarchical view (upper-right-hand of window) so you can see which process it's buried in.

[mayoko185]

There was another part I hoped you would try. When viewing the Activity Monitor you can switch to a hierarchical view (upper-right-hand of window) so you can see which process it's buried in.

If I do it like that I get: pmTool > lsof > lsof

the middle lsof one is the one eating all my cpu power, also root is the user is that helps. Thanks for the info so far! :D

EDIT: also when I click either lsof or pmTool on activity monitor the open to forcequit is not there and quit is grayed out (unable to click it).

[angelwatt]

If I do it like that I get: pmTool > lsof > lsof

the middle lsof one is the one eating all my cpu power, also root is the user is that helps. Thanks for the info so far! :D

EDIT: also when I click either lsof or pmTool on activity monitor the open to forcequit is not there and quit is grayed out (unable to click it).

Hmm, well from what I could find, pmTool is apart of Activity Monitor, but that doesn't reveal anything to me as to where lsof is coming from. Have you installed any add-ons for Mac or installed anything recently?

I did find this discussion, which is a tad old, but sounds promising, http://monkeyfilter.com/link.php/10604 It states that lsof is a unix process which means "list of files." One possible source is SysStat Widget, do you have that? Read through the whole discussion to see if you can pick up any other ideas.

And here is a page that shows how to use lsof, http://switchersblog.com/mac-tips/ Interesting.

By the way, I've been finding this stuff by just doing a Google search of "mac process lsof."