Re:Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your ...
by filterfish on Friday December 26, 2025 @11:29PM
(#46399153)
Looking up the binary in the package management system would also provide another source of useful information. Of course this would dramatically increase the complexity but would, I think, be useful.
If you could look it up using APT/dpkg first, that would be lovely :-)
Re:Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your ...
by ajb on Saturday December 27, 2025 @04:46AM
(#46400535)
If you have its path, dpkg already has an option to do that: "dpkg -S". Although some extra logic is needed for symlinks.
Re:Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your ...
by darrenf on Saturday December 27, 2025 @03:27AM
(#46400180)
Is that not `whatis`?
Re:Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your ...
by pranshuparmar on Saturday December 27, 2025 @06:41AM
(#46401101)
Thanks, glad you liked it! As @darrenf mentioned, `whatis` can help with that use case. For now, I’m keeping `witr` focused on explaining PIDs.
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Edit: Ah, ok, I slightly misunderstood - skimmed the README too quickly. I thought it was also explaining what the process did :D Still a clever tool, but thought it went a step further.
Perhaps you should add that though - combine Man page output with a database of known processes that run on various Linux systems and a mechanism for contributing PRs to extend that database...? Unlesss it's just me that often wants to know "what the fsck does /tmp/hax0r/deeploysketchyd actually do?" :P