Linux pipe count

I recently needed to keep track of the number of pipes opened by a server and I was using lsof -nw | fgrep FIFO but this was rather slow.

Here's a better way of counting the number of pipes opened:

# find /proc/[0-9]*/fd -lname 'pipe:*' 2>/dev/null -printf "%l\n" | wc -l
1294
# find /proc/[0-9]*/fd -lname 'pipe:*' 2>/dev/null -printf "%l\n" | sort -u | wc -l
16

So in this case there are 16 different pipes opened on this system and 1294 FDs associated with one or the other end of each pipe. Let's see how many FDs are associated with each pipe:

# find /proc/[0-9]*/fd -lname 'pipe:*' 2>/dev/null -printf "%l\n" | sort | uniq -c
      1 pipe:[10420]
      4 pipe:[1752247694]
      4 pipe:[1752247702]
      2 pipe:[1752247883]
      2 pipe:[234248737]
      1 pipe:[2597396375]
    504 pipe:[4194986548]
    255 pipe:[4194986549]
    252 pipe:[4194986551]
    252 pipe:[4194986552]
      2 pipe:[4213391983]
      1 pipe:[4214019609]
      2 pipe:[480771901]
      8 pipe:[480771902]
      2 pipe:[6087]
      2 pipe:[6288]

So certain pipes are much more popular than others.

Bonus script to find out which pipe is used by which process:

# find /proc/[0-9]*/fd -lname 'pipe:*' -printf "%p/%l\n" 2>/dev/null | python -c 'import os
import sys
pid2cmd = {}
def cmdname(pid):
  cmd = os.path.basename(os.readlink("/proc/%s/exe" % pid))
  pid2cmd[pid] = cmd
  return cmd
pipes = {}
for line in sys.stdin:
  line = line.rstrip().split("/")
  pid, pipe = line[2], line[5]
  cmd = pid2cmd.get(pid) or cmdname(pid)
  pipes.setdefault(pipe, {}).setdefault(cmd, 0)
  pipes[pipe][cmd] += 1
n = 0
for pipe, cmds in sorted(pipes.iteritems()):
  print pipe,
  for cmd, cnt in cmds.iteritems():
    n += int(cnt)
    print "%s=%s" % (cmd, cnt),
  print
print len(pipes), "pipes using", n, "fds"'
pipe:[10420] rpc.statd=1
pipe:[1752247694] dsm_sa_datamgr32d.5.8.0.4961=4
pipe:[1752247702] dsm_sa_datamgr32d.5.8.0.4961=4
pipe:[1752247883] dsm_sa_datamgr32d.5.8.0.4961=2
pipe:[234248737] famd=2
pipe:[2597396375] ntpd=1
pipe:[4194986548] apache2=504
pipe:[4194986549] dash=1 rotatelogs=1 apache2=253
pipe:[4194986551] apache2=252
pipe:[4194986552] apache2=252
pipe:[4214440803] sshd=2
pipe:[4214877266] find=1
pipe:[480771901] master=2
pipe:[480771902] qmgr=2 pickup=2 master=2 tlsmgr=2
pipe:[6087] init=2
pipe:[6288] udevd=2
16 pipes using 1294 fds

So apache2 is the heavy pipe user here. Yay for mpm_prefork</irony>