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Is there a tool to monitor which files get read/written by an app?

rjalex

rjalex

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2011
275
63
Rome, Italy
I am spliiting my brain to spot which file got corrupted by a Java program called Protegè by Stanford University. It's a Java application still running a Java 8 version. Support of the app is moribund if not dead.

I have created a new user (jeffrey) on my 12.3.1 M1 Mini system and installed the same app there and it works as it used to work in my main user (bob) account.

So I guess it could be some corrupted plist or something alike in the bob user directory right?

I did find a number of protege related plist files in the /Users/bob/Library/ and /Users/bob/Library/Preferences directories using the Unix find command (find . -name \*protege\*) and deleted them all but unfortunately protegè still misbehaves so I think there might be OTHER settings in OTHER files.

Any suggestions on how to get to discover them?

Thanks a bunch.
 
If the file remains open, the lsof command might be helpful.

I may be mistaken, but I think the Activity Monitor app also has the ability to show all the files a process has open. You'll probably need to dig into its user guide.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac

Learn how to use Activity Monitor on your Mac to view information about how apps are using the processor, disks, memory, network, and more.
support.apple.com

Finally, I suspect DTRACE could do this, but exactly how I have no idea.
 
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Sloth looks very interesting. Possibly dumb question: will it show only currently open files or also files that have been opened and then closed? Thank you very much.
 
I think it will show only open files. It basically is a gui for the lsof command.
 
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