procinfo

A portable process inspector for Linux and macOS. Get details about any running process instantly!

Also see procinfo_minimal.sh - pure sh implementation of procinfo.

Installation

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wenekar/procinfo/main/procinfo.sh -o procinfo
chmod +x procinfo
sudo mv procinfo /usr/local/bin/

Or just copy the script. It's a bash script with no dependencies beyond standard Unix tools (ps, lsof, pgrep). Or better yet, copy parts of it, combine them, make one script that satisfies your specific needs!

Features

Cross-platform - Works on Linux and macOS (no Windows?)
Zero dependencies - Except for bash and standard Unix tools, and maybe an operating system.
Process tree - See all parents of a given process. (shocking!)
Environment inspection - See ENV variables for a given process (-V or --env)
Systemd integration - If a process belongs to a .service, shows the path to that .service file.
SSH integration - Instantly see the user@IP of the ssh-session that started the process.
git integration - Does the process belong to a git repo? See the branch, and remote URL directly in the output.
Docker aware - Detects containers, composes, container-id, image name, port bindings... May add more info later.
Network info - Shows all listening ports for a process.
Port list - Pretty ss -tunlp output for everyone!
Lock detection - Shows lock files and open files of the process.
Multiple formats - Human-readable, short one-liner, or JSON
Case-insensitive - procinfo nginx matches Nginx, NGINX, etc.
TUI mode with fzf - Turns out, fzf is kinda awesome! Beware, this is not a top replacement, it's meant to be used to see open ports, not all processes.

Requirements

procinfo:

A UNIX-like system
bash
ps
lsof
pgrep

Optional dependencies:

docker
git
systemctl
whatis (included with man)
jq (json output support)
fzf (TUI mode)

procinfo_minimal:

Usage

# Interactive TUI mode (requires fzf)
procinfo --tui

# By process name
procinfo nginx

# By port
procinfo --port 3306

# By PID
procinfo --pid 1234

# One-line output
procinfo --short nginx

# JSON output (requires jq)
procinfo --json nginx

Example Output

Target      : godot

Process     : godot.linuxbsd. (pid 234167)
User        : wenekar
Command     : ./bin/godot.linuxbsd.editor.x86_64 --verbose
Started at  : Wed Dec 31 19:12:10 2025
Running for : 1 minute, 6 seconds
RSS Memory  : 330 MB

Process tree:
  systemd (pid 1) → systemd (pid 1141) → konsole (pid 1725) → fish (pid 233851) → godot.linuxbsd. (pid 234167)

Source      : interactive fish shell
git info    : godot (fix-libdecor-ssd-fallback) - git@github.com:wenekar/godot.git
Working Dir : /mnt/Sandisk480/GitHub/godot
Open files  : /memfd:kwin-xkb-keymap-shared
              /memfd:wayland-cursor

Docker Container

When inspecting a port bound to a Docker container:

Target      : port 6379

Process     : docker-proxy (pid 31782)
User        : root
Command     : /usr/bin/docker-proxy -proto tcp -host-ip 0.0.0.0 -host-port 6379 -container-ip 172.18.0.2 -container-port 6379 -use-listen-fd
Started at  : Wed Dec 31 01:45:01 2025
Running for : 17 hours, 28 minutes, 39 seconds
RSS Memory  : 6 MB

Process tree:
  systemd (pid 1) → dockerd (pid 25817) → docker-proxy (pid 31782)

Source      : container runtime
git info    : not found
Working Dir : /
Listening   : *:6379

Docker info :
  Container : redis (463ab2f88502)
  Image     : redis
  Compose   : backend_test (/home/wenekar/backend_test/docker-compose.yml)
  Internal  : 172.18.0.2:6379

Docker cheatsheet:
  docker logs redis
  docker exec -it redis sh
  docker top redis
  docker ps //see all containers

Options

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | -p, --port <port> | Find process listening on port | | -P, --pid <pid> | Inspect specific PID | | -a, --all-ports | List all listening ports | | -t, --tui | Interactive TUI mode (requires fzf) | | -s, --short | One-line output (just the process chain) | | -j, --json | JSON output (requires jq) | | -d, --description | Wait for process description (slow on macOS) | | --no-color | Disable colored output | | -h, --help | Show help | | -v, --version | Show version |

Why?

I saw an ad on TikTok about a project called witr, link to said TikTok video. Then I thought to myself, who is the target user? Who is that binary for? Isn't this just a bash wrapper of ps -p?

Thus came procinfo, turns out, I am that target user. Also see issue 32.

License

MIT

Procinfo

Install / Use

README