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Full Discussion: Netstat
Special Forums IP Networking Netstat Post 7763 by loadc on Monday 1st of October 2001 10:22:22 PM
Old 10-01-2001
Lessee here....

You asked what the connections are:

the first poster answered that as well as I could, they are the connections to and fromyour box, the last column is the state of the "socket" (connection). these are FASCINATING things, and it always pays to know about them, Sys Admin did an excellent article this last year on socket states, look it up at their site, www.sysadminmag.com, I think

You also asked about knowing what the ports are doing:

again, the other posters covered this extremely well, lsof and ps are your friends here, as well as teh iptraf command, do a man on any or all of them and if you don't have lsof, I suggest getting it, it is very useful. You could also turn on promiscuous (?) mode on your interface with tcpdump/etherpeek/snoop/any other packet dumper, and look to see what is coming in, that is an education in networking in itself. Do a man on tcpdump, and you can learn more about ip traffic than you thought existed.

You also asked if closing the ports will do any harm:

That depends, are you connected on the port via telnet to your remote machine? If so, it would kill that session, you could also kill mail, and many other helpful connections to your machine, not to mention any servers listening on ports (these will be in a state of LISTEN).

Now, some also mentioned that you have to wait for a length of time before you can see the port be released and may reuse it again. this is true, but it is also usually a kernel parm taht is settable and can be cranked down to 5 seconds (or less on some platforms), be CAREFUL with this, it is dangerous to set your timeouts so low.....
Noe there is also an interactive way to kill these ports and NOT wait, WITHOUT the kernel parm; Dugsong put out a tool a while back called dsniff, it is a suite of some really wicked tools he used to figure out some networking things on his own system. There are some amazing things in there. One of the tools is tcpkill, it allows you to kill a socket on the localhost and NOT timeout the port, it just goes AWAY... very good programming...
He has made this available in the *BSD ports and packages, as well as at his site, which is quite interesting (when he isn't censoring it due to the DMCA...
www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff.html ought to get you there. I will warn you, this tool is very dangerous in the wrong hands, it was intended for learning and should be used with the respect due to it and it's author. Using it illegally would endanger eveyone else's access to it, not only your own, so think of others and use it wisely and respectfully... please.


Ciao


loadc
 

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NETSTAT(8)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							NETSTAT(8)

NAME
netstat - Print network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, and multicast memberships SYNOPSIS
netstat [address_family_options] [--tcp|-t] [--udp|-u] [--raw|-w] [--listening|-l] [--all|-a] [--numeric|-n] [--numeric-hosts][--numeric- ports][--numeric-ports] [--symbolic|-N] [--extend|-e[--extend|-e]] [--timers|-o] [--program|-p] [--verbose|-v] [--continuous|-c] [delay] netstat {--route|-r} [address_family_options] [--extend|-e[--extend|-e]] [--verbose|-v] [--numeric|-n] [--numeric-hosts][--numeric- ports][--numeric-ports] [--continuous|-c] [delay] netstat {--interfaces|-i} [iface] [--all|-a] [--extend|-e[--extend|-e]] [--verbose|-v] [--program|-p] [--numeric|-n] [--numeric- hosts][--numeric-ports][--numeric-ports] [--continuous|-c] [delay] netstat {--groups|-g} [--numeric|-n] [--numeric-hosts][--numeric-ports][--numeric-ports] [--continuous|-c] [delay] netstat {--masquerade|-M} [--extend|-e] [--numeric|-n] [--numeric-hosts][--numeric-ports][--numeric-ports] [--continuous|-c] [delay] netstat {--statistics|-s} [--tcp|-t] [--udp|-u] [--raw|-w] [delay] netstat {--version|-V} netstat {--help|-h} address_family_options: [--protocol={inet,unix,ipx,ax25,netrom,ddp}[,...]] [--unix|-x] [--inet|--ip] [--ax25] [--ipx] [--netrom] [--ddp] DESCRIPTION
Netstat prints information about the Linux networking subsystem. The type of information printed is controlled by the first argument, as follows: (none) By default, netstat displays a list of open sockets. If you don't specify any address families, then the active sockets of all configured address families will be printed. --route , -r Display the kernel routing tables. --groups , -g Display multicast group membership information for IPv4 and IPv6. --interface=iface , -i Display a table of all network interfaces, or the specified iface). --masquerade , -M Display a list of masqueraded connections. --statistics , -s Display summary statistics for each protocol. OPTIONS
--verbose , -v Tell the user what is going on by being verbose. Especially print some useful information about unconfigured address families. --numeric , -n Show numerical addresses instead of trying to determine symbolic host, port or user names. --numeric-hosts shows numerical host addresses but does not affect the resolution of port or user names. --numeric-ports shows numerical port numbers but does not affect the resolution of host or user names. --numeric-users shows numerical user IDs but does not affect the resolution of host or port names. --protocol=family , -A Specifies the address families (perhaps better described as low level protocols) for which connections are to be shown. family is a comma (',') separated list of address family keywords like inet, unix, ipx, ax25, netrom, and ddp. This has the same effect as using the --inet, --unix (-x), --ipx, --ax25, --netrom, and --ddp options. The address family inet includes raw, udp and tcp protocol sockets. -c, --continuous This will cause netstat to print the selected information every second continuously. -e, --extend Display additional information. Use this option twice for maximum detail. -o, --timers Include information related to networking timers. -p, --program Show the PID and name of the program to which each socket belongs. -l, --listening Show only listening sockets. (These are omitted by default.) -a, --all Show both listening and non-listening sockets. With the --interfaces option, show interfaces that are not marked -F Print routing information from the FIB. (This is the default.) -C Print routing information from the route cache. delay Netstat will cycle printing through statistics every delay seconds. UP. OUTPUT
Active Internet connections (TCP, UDP, raw) Proto The protocol (tcp, udp, raw) used by the socket. Recv-Q The count of bytes not copied by the user program connected to this socket. Send-Q The count of bytes not acknowledged by the remote host. Local Address Address and port number of the local end of the socket. Unless the --numeric (-n) option is specified, the socket address is resolved to its canonical host name (FQDN), and the port number is translated into the corresponding service name. Foreign Address Address and port number of the remote end of the socket. Analogous to "Local Address." State The state of the socket. Since there are no states in raw mode and usually no states used in UDP, this column may be left blank. Normally this can be one of several values: ESTABLISHED The socket has an established connection. SYN_SENT The socket is actively attempting to establish a connection. SYN_RECV A connection request has been received from the network. FIN_WAIT1 The socket is closed, and the connection is shutting down. FIN_WAIT2 Connection is closed, and the socket is waiting for a shutdown from the remote end. TIME_WAIT The socket is waiting after close to handle packets still in the network. CLOSED The socket is not being used. CLOSE_WAIT The remote end has shut down, waiting for the socket to close. LAST_ACK The remote end has shut down, and the socket is closed. Waiting for acknowledgement. LISTEN The socket is listening for incoming connections. Such sockets are not included in the output unless you specify the --listening (-l) or --all (-a) option. CLOSING Both sockets are shut down but we still don't have all our data sent. UNKNOWN The state of the socket is unknown. User The username or the user id (UID) of the owner of the socket. PID/Program name Slash-separated pair of the process id (PID) and process name of the process that owns the socket. --program causes this column to be included. You will also need superuser privileges to see this information on sockets you don't own. This identification information is not yet available for IPX sockets. Timer (this needs to be written) Active UNIX domain Sockets Proto The protocol (usually unix) used by the socket. RefCnt The reference count (i.e. attached processes via this socket). Flags The flags displayed is SO_ACCEPTON (displayed as ACC), SO_WAITDATA (W) or SO_NOSPACE (N). SO_ACCECPTON is used on unconnected sockets if their corresponding processes are waiting for a connect request. The other flags are not of normal interest. Type There are several types of socket access: SOCK_DGRAM The socket is used in Datagram (connectionless) mode. SOCK_STREAM This is a stream (connection) socket. SOCK_RAW The socket is used as a raw socket. SOCK_RDM This one serves reliably-delivered messages. SOCK_SEQPACKET This is a sequential packet socket. SOCK_PACKET Raw interface access socket. UNKNOWN Who ever knows what the future will bring us - just fill in here :-) State This field will contain one of the following Keywords: FREE The socket is not allocated LISTENING The socket is listening for a connection request. Such sockets are only included in the output if you specify the --listening (-l) or --all (-a) option. CONNECTING The socket is about to establish a connection. CONNECTED The socket is connected. DISCONNECTING The socket is disconnecting. (empty) The socket is not connected to another one. UNKNOWN This state should never happen. PID/Program name Process ID (PID) and process name of the process that has the socket open. More info available in Active Internet connections section written above. Path This is the path name as which the corresponding processes attached to the socket. Active IPX sockets (this needs to be done by somebody who knows it) Active NET/ROM sockets (this needs to be done by somebody who knows it) Active AX.25 sockets (this needs to be done by somebody who knows it) NOTES
Starting with Linux release 2.2 netstat -i does not show interface statistics for alias interfaces. To get per alias interface counters you need to setup explicit rules using the ipchains(8) command. FILES
/etc/services -- The services translation file /proc -- Mount point for the proc filesystem, which gives access to kernel status information via the following files. /proc/net/dev -- device information /proc/net/raw -- raw socket information /proc/net/tcp -- TCP socket information /proc/net/udp -- UDP socket information /proc/net/igmp -- IGMP multicast information /proc/net/unix -- Unix domain socket information /proc/net/ipx -- IPX socket information /proc/net/ax25 -- AX25 socket information /proc/net/appletalk -- DDP (appletalk) socket information /proc/net/nr -- NET/ROM socket information /proc/net/route -- IP routing information /proc/net/ax25_route -- AX25 routing information /proc/net/ipx_route -- IPX routing information /proc/net/nr_nodes -- NET/ROM nodelist /proc/net/nr_neigh -- NET/ROM neighbours /proc/net/ip_masquerade -- masqueraded connections /proc/net/snmp -- statistics SEE ALSO
route(8), ifconfig(8), ipchains(8), iptables(8), proc(5) BUGS
Occasionally strange information may appear if a socket changes as it is viewed. This is unlikely to occur. AUTHORS
The netstat user interface was written by Fred Baumgarten <dc6iq@insu1.etec.uni-karlsruhe.de> the man page basically by Matt Welsh <mdw@tc.cornell.edu>. It was updated by Alan Cox <Alan.Cox@linux.org> but could do with a bit more work. It was updated again by Tuan Hoang <tqhoang@bigfoot.com>. The man page and the command included in the net-tools package is totally rewritten by Bernd Eckenfels <ecki@linux.de>. net-tools 19 December 2000 NETSTAT(8)
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