SS(8) System

Manager's Manual
SS(8)

NAME
ss - another utility to investigate sockets

SYNOPSIS
ss [options] [ FILTER ]

DESCRIPTION
ss is used to dump socket statistics. It allows showing information similar
to netstat. It can display more TCP and state information than other tools.

OPTIONS
When no option is used ss displays a list of open non-listening sockets
(e.g. TCP/UNIX/UDP) that have established connection.

-h, --help
Show summary of options.

-V, --version
Output version information.

-H, --no-header
Suppress header line.

-O, --oneline
Print each socket's data on a single line.

-n, --numeric
Do not try to resolve service names. Show exact bandwidth values,
instead of human-readable.

-r, --resolve
Try to resolve numeric address/ports.

-a, --all
Display both listening and non-listening (for TCP this means
established connections) sockets.

-l, --listening
Display only listening sockets (these are omitted by default).

-o, --options
Show timer information. For TCP protocol, the output format is:

timer:(<timer_name>,<expire_time>,<retrans>)

<timer_name>
the name of the timer, there are five kind of timer names:

on : means one of these timers: TCP retrans timer, TCP early

retrans timer and tail loss probe timer

keepalive: tcp keep alive timer

timewait: timewait stage timer

 persist: zero window probe timer

unknown: none of the above timers

<expire_time>
how long time the timer will expire

<retrans>
how many times the retransmission occured

-e, --extended
Show detailed socket information. The output format is:

uid:<uid_number> ino:<inode_number> sk:<cookie>

<uid_number>
the user id the socket belongs to

<inode_number>
the socket's inode number in VFS

<cookie>
an uuid of the socket

-m, --memory
Show socket memory usage. The output format is:

skmem:(r<rmem_alloc>,rb<rcv_buf>,t<wmem_alloc>,tb<snd_buf>,
f<fwd_alloc>,w<wmem_queued>,o<opt_mem>,
bl<back_log>,d<sock_drop>)

<rmem_alloc>
the memory allocated for receiving packet

<rcv_buf>
the total memory can be allocated for receiving packet

<wmem_alloc>
the memory used for sending packet (which has been sent to
layer 3)

<snd_buf>
the total memory can be allocated for sending packet

<fwd_alloc>
the memory allocated by the socket as cache, but not used
for receiving/sending packet yet. If need memory to send/receive packet, the memory
in this
cache will be used before allocate additional memory.

<wmem_queued>
The memory allocated for sending packet (which has not been
sent to layer 3)

<ropt_mem>
The memory used for storing socket option, e.g., the key for
TCP MD5 signature

<back_log>
 The memory used for the sk backlog queue. On a process
context, if the process is receiving packet, and a new packet is received, it will
be put into the
sk backlog queue, so it can be received by the process
immediately

<sock_drop>
the number of packets dropped before they are de-multiplexed
into the socket

-p, --processes
Show process using socket.

-i, --info
Show internal TCP information. Below fields may appear:

ts show string "ts" if the timestamp option is set

sack show string "sack" if the sack option is set

ecn show string "ecn" if the explicit congestion notification

option is set

ecnseen
show string "ecnseen" if the saw ecn flag is found in received
packets

fastopen
show string "fastopen" if the fastopen option is set

cong_alg
the congestion algorithm name, the default congestion
algorithm is "cubic"

wscale:<snd_wscale>:<rcv_wscale>
if window scale option is used, this field shows the send
scale factor and receive scale factor

rto:<icsk_rto>
tcp re-transmission timeout value, the unit is millisecond

backoff:<icsk_backoff>
used for exponential backoff re-transmission, the actual re-
transmission timeout value is icsk_rto << icsk_backoff

rtt:<rtt>/<rttvar>
rtt is the average round trip time, rttvar is the mean
deviation of rtt, their units are millisecond

ato:<ato>
ack timeout, unit is millisecond, used for delay ack mode

mss:<mss>
max segment size

cwnd:<cwnd>
congestion window size

pmtu:<pmtu>
 path MTU value

ssthresh:<ssthresh>
tcp congestion window slow start threshold

bytes_acked:<bytes_acked>
bytes acked

bytes_received:<bytes_received>
bytes received

segs_out:<segs_out>
segments sent out

segs_in:<segs_in>
segments received

send <send_bps>bps
egress bps

lastsnd:<lastsnd>
how long time since the last packet sent, the unit is
millisecond

lastrcv:<lastrcv>
how long time since the last packet received, the unit is
millisecond

lastack:<lastack>
how long time since the last ack received, the unit is
millisecond

pacing_rate <pacing_rate>bps/<max_pacing_rate>bps
the pacing rate and max pacing rate

rcv_space:<rcv_space>
a helper variable for TCP internal auto tuning socket receive
buffer

--tos Show ToS and priority information. Below fields may appear:

tos IPv4 Type-of-Service byte

tclass IPv6 Traffic Class byte

class_id
Class id set by net_cls cgroup. If class is zero this shows
priority set by SO_PRIORITY.

-K, --kill
Attempts to forcibly close sockets. This option displays sockets
that are successfully closed and silently skips sockets that the kernel does not
support clos‐
ing. It supports IPv4 and IPv6 sockets only.

-s, --summary
Print summary statistics. This option does not parse socket lists
obtaining summary from various sources. It is useful when amount of sockets is so
huge that
 parsing /proc/net/tcp is painful.

-E, --events
Continually display sockets as they are destroyed

-Z, --context
As the -p option but also shows process security context.

For netlink(7) sockets the initiating process context is displayed as

follows:

1. If valid pid show the process context.

2. If destination is kernel (pid = 0) show kernel initial

context.

3. If a unique identifier has been allocated by the kernel

or netlink user, show context as "unavailable". This will generally indicate that a
process
has more than one netlink socket active.

-z, --contexts
As the -Z option but also shows the socket context. The socket
context is taken from the associated inode and is not the actual socket context
held by the ker‐
nel. Sockets are typically labeled with the context of the creating
process, however the context shown will reflect any policy role, type and/or range
transition
rules applied, and is therefore a useful reference.

-N NSNAME, --net=NSNAME
Switch to the specified network namespace name.

-b, --bpf
Show socket BPF filters (only administrators are allowed to get these
information).

-4, --ipv4
Display only IP version 4 sockets (alias for -f inet).

-6, --ipv6
Display only IP version 6 sockets (alias for -f inet6).

-0, --packet
Display PACKET sockets (alias for -f link).

-t, --tcp
Display TCP sockets.

-u, --udp
Display UDP sockets.

-d, --dccp
Display DCCP sockets.

-w, --raw
Display RAW sockets.

-x, --unix
 Display Unix domain sockets (alias for -f unix).

-S, --sctp
Display SCTP sockets.

--vsock
Display vsock sockets (alias for -f vsock).

--xdp Display XDP sockets (alias for -f xdp).

-f FAMILY, --family=FAMILY
Display sockets of type FAMILY. Currently the following families are
supported: unix, inet, inet6, link, netlink, vsock, xdp.

-A QUERY, --query=QUERY, --socket=QUERY

List of socket tables to dump, separated by commas. The following
identifiers are understood: all, inet, tcp, udp, raw, unix, packet, netlink,
unix_dgram,
unix_stream, unix_seqpacket, packet_raw, packet_dgram, dccp, sctp,
vsock_stream, vsock_dgram, xdp Any item in the list may optionally be prefixed by
an exclama‐
tion mark (!) to exclude that socket table from being dumped.

-D FILE, --diag=FILE
Do not display anything, just dump raw information about TCP sockets
to FILE after applying filters. If FILE is - stdout is used.

-F FILE, --filter=FILE
Read filter information from FILE. Each line of FILE is interpreted
like single command line option. If FILE is - stdin is used.

FILTER := [ state STATE-FILTER ] [ EXPRESSION ]

Please take a look at the official documentation for details
regarding filters.

STATE-FILTER
STATE-FILTER allows to construct arbitrary set of states to match. Its
syntax is sequence of keywords state and exclude followed by identifier of state.

Available identifiers are:

All standard TCP states: established, syn-sent, syn-recv, fin-wait-1,

fin-wait-2, time-wait, closed, close-wait, last-ack, listening and closing.

all - for all the states

connected - all the states except for listening and closed

synchronized - all the connected states except for syn-sent

bucket - states, which are maintained as minisockets, i.e. time-wait

and syn-recv

big - opposite to bucket

USAGE EXAMPLES
ss -t -a
Display all TCP sockets.
 ss -t -a -Z
Display all TCP sockets with process SELinux security contexts.

ss -u -a
Display all UDP sockets.

ss -o state established '( dport = :ssh or sport = :ssh )'

Display all established ssh connections.

ss -x src /tmp/.X11-unix/*
Find all local processes connected to X server.

ss -o state fin-wait-1 '( sport = :http or sport = :https )' dst

193.233.7/24
List all the tcp sockets in state FIN-WAIT-1 for our apache to
network 193.233.7/24 and look at their timers.

ss -a -A 'all,!tcp'
List sockets in all states from all socket tables but TCP.

SEE ALSO
ip(8),
RFC 793 - https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt (TCP states)

AUTHOR
ss was written by Alexey Kuznetsov, <[email protected]>.

This manual page was written by Michael Prokop <[email protected]> for the
Debian project (but may be used by others).

SS(8)