[HN Gopher] Show HN: Witr - Explain why a process is running on ...
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       Show HN: Witr - Explain why a process is running on your Linux
       system
        
       Hi HN,  I built a small Linux CLI tool called witr (Why Is This
       Running?).  The idea came from a situation most of us have hit: you
       log into a machine, see a process or port running, and immediately
       wonder why it exists, who started it, and what is keeping it alive
       right now.  witr traces a process, service, or port back to its
       origin and responsibility chain and explains it in a way that's
       quick to read, especially when you're debugging under pressure.
       This is v0.1.0. It's intentionally small and focused. Feedback,
       criticism, and edge cases are very welcome.  Repo:
       https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr
        
       Author : pranshuparmar
       Score  : 128 points
       Date   : 2025-12-26 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | pranshuparmar wrote:
       | A quick note on scope: this is not meant to replace existing
       | monitoring or observability tools. It's designed for those
       | moments when you SSH into a box and need to quickly understand
       | "why is this running" without digging through configs, cron jobs,
       | or service trees manually.
       | 
       | Happy to answer questions or adjust direction based on feedback.
        
         | dcminter wrote:
         | This is very clever. I've often needed to figure out what some
         | running process was actually for (e.g. because it just started
         | consuming a lot of some limited resource) but it _never_
         | occurred to me that one could have a tool to answer that
         | question. Well done.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | 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
        
       | Saris wrote:
       | This looks very handy to have around!
        
       | canxerian wrote:
       | Great idea!
        
       | 4ggr0 wrote:
       | i definitely see the use for it, lots of moments where i wonder
       | how or why something was started.
        
       | q2dg wrote:
       | pstree doesn't answer the why?
        
         | mathfailure wrote:
         | No, it does not.
        
       | dontdieych wrote:
       | Nice and installed then starred.
        
       | TheCraiggers wrote:
       | This is amazing. Thank you for sharing this.
       | 
       | Do you have any qualms about me making an entry in the AUR for
       | this?
        
         | giancarlostoro wrote:
         | Im not the author but I would love for an AUR made for this ;)
         | 
         | My favorite thing about arch is how insanely quickly AURs pop
         | up for interesting tools.
        
       | techsystems wrote:
       | I'm really loving this!
       | 
       | 'Responsibility chain' will become a trendy phrase.
        
       | mh- wrote:
       | This is great. Small, trivial suggestion: the gif that loops in
       | the README should pause on the screen w/ the output for a few
       | seconds longer - it disappears (restarts) too quickly to take in
       | all of the output.
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs is a really good utility
         | for automatically making these gifs.
        
       | DougN7 wrote:
       | What does this means for context: "Git repository name and
       | branch" Does this mean it detects if something is running from
       | within a git repository folder? Couldn't find the code that
       | checked this.
        
         | jackwilsdon wrote:
         | It appears to walk up from the process's working directory
         | searching for a .git directory:
         | https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr/blob/1e47bdb8fde179b17...
        
       | be_erik wrote:
       | If you're looking to build and install this from source, here's
       | the incantation:
       | 
       | CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -ldflags "-X main.version=dev -X
       | main.commit=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD) -X
       | 'main.buildDate=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)'" -o witr ./cmd/witr
       | 
       | Call me old-fashioned, but if there's an install.sh, I would hope
       | it would prefer the local src over binaries.
       | 
       | Very cool utility! Simple tools like these keep me glued to the
       | terminal. Thank you!
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-26 23:00 UTC)