Linux netstat for mac

[EricoCartmanez]

Hi,

I think it would be great if we could somehow install netstat used in linux distributions via brew as mac's netstat it's almost useless.

Thank you.

[Bo98]

netstat on Linux is now deprecated/obsolete, replaced by ss in iproute2.

I don't know much about the old net-tools, but iproute2 definitely relies on the Linux kernel and unfortunately can't be trivially built on macOS.

[EricoCartmanez]

SS then :)
You can't install SS via brew either.

P.S.: Netstat is supposed to be deprecated since years but everybody's using it.

[SMillerDev]

https://docs.brew.sh/Adding-Software-to-Homebrew would be the best place to start.

[SMillerDev]

There is no one way to add software to brew, every software has it's own dependencies and requirements. The only real information you can get is usually provided by the upstream project.

[EricoCartmanez]

Trying to compile it on my machine. I manually created some missing files as suggested here but..
I don't think it will ever work :/

my@macbook  ~/Desktop/iproute2-5.10.0  make

lib
    CC       libgenl.o
In file included from libgenl.c:10:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/genetlink.h:5:
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:5:10: error: 'asm/types.h' file not found with <angled> include; use "quotes" instead
#include <asm/types.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
         "asm/types.h"
In file included from libgenl.c:10:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/genetlink.h:5:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/types.h:9:
../include/uapi/linux/posix_types.h:36:10: error: 'asm/posix_types.h' file not found with <angled> include; use "quotes" instead
#include <asm/posix_types.h>
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
         "asm/posix_types.h"
In file included from libgenl.c:10:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/genetlink.h:5:
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:24:9: error: unknown type name '__u16'
typedef __u16 __bitwise __le16;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:25:9: error: unknown type name '__u16'
typedef __u16 __bitwise __be16;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:26:9: error: unknown type name '__u32'
typedef __u32 __bitwise __le32;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:27:9: error: unknown type name '__u32'
typedef __u32 __bitwise __be32;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:28:9: error: unknown type name '__u64'
typedef __u64 __bitwise __le64;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:29:9: error: unknown type name '__u64'
typedef __u64 __bitwise __be64;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:31:9: error: unknown type name '__u16'
typedef __u16 __bitwise __sum16;
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/types.h:32:9: error: unknown type name '__u32'
typedef __u32 __bitwise __wsum;
        ^
In file included from libgenl.c:10:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/genetlink.h:6:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/netlink.h:5:
In file included from ../include/uapi/linux/kernel.h:5:
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:9:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_long_t'
        __kernel_long_t uptime;         /* Seconds since boot */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:10:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t loads[3];      /* 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:11:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t totalram;      /* Total usable main memory size */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:12:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t freeram;       /* Available memory size */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:13:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t sharedram;     /* Amount of shared memory */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:14:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t bufferram;     /* Memory used by buffers */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:15:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t totalswap;     /* Total swap space size */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:16:2: error: unknown type name '__kernel_ulong_t'
        __kernel_ulong_t freeswap;      /* swap space still available */
        ^
../include/uapi/linux/sysinfo.h:17:2: error: unknown type name '__u16'
        __u16 procs;                    /* Number of current processes */
        ^
fatal error: too many errors emitted, stopping now [-ferror-limit=]
20 errors generated.

[danielnachun]

Those errors are happening because iproute2 needs the Linux API, which means it needs the Linux kernel. So you are correct that it will probably never work on macOS. It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be an equivalent tool on macOS.

The only solution I can think of is to see if you can set up iproute2 in a Linux container and see if you can forward the network connections to the VM. I am not a network expert, even less when it comes to VMs, so I don't know if the virtualization would interfere with whatever you need to do with iproute2. But that might be more convenient than having to dual boot Linux or run it on a different machine.

[gwerbin]

There is an alternative implementation of sockstat that ships with FreeBSD, but it might depend on parts of the BSD kernel which are not shared by XNU (the MacOS kernel).

[mezantrop]

There is an alternative implementation of sockstat that ships with FreeBSD, but it might depend on parts of the BSD kernel which are not shared by XNU (the MacOS kernel).

If somebody still interested, try my implementation: https://github.com/mezantrop/sockstat