lsof: Your New Best Friend

Nifty tip from Steven Frank: when you get that annoying “Such-and-such file cannot be deleted because it is in use” alert when you attempt to empty the Trash, you can use the command-line lsof tool to find out which app is using the file. (It’s the fact that the dialog doesn’t tell you which app is using the file that makes it so annoying.)

★ Tuesday, 23 May 2006