Readme.txt file for Sloth, version 1.5 dated 09/07/2010

What is Sloth?

Sloth is a program that displays a list of all open files in use by all the applications your user account is running on the system -- this list includes IP and Unix sockets, character devices and directories.  This list is presented along with the names of applications using the file and their process IDs.  Sloth requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.  For versions compatible with previous incarnations of Mac OS X, you must download an older version.

Sloth is written in Objective-C and utilises Apple's Cocoa application programming interfaces.  This software is free, open-source software distributed under the terms and conditions of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License.

That being said, Sloth is the product of continual work and improvement over the span of the past few years.  If you find Sloth to be a genuinely useful piece of software I ask you to please consider making a donation to encourage me in improving it and fixing bugs -- http://sveinbjorn.org/donations


How do I use Sloth?

Press the Refresh button in the Sloth window to get a list of open files.  It is possible to include/exclude certain types of files by checking the relevant checkboxes in the application window.  A search filter allows you to filter the list of files and find individual items using regular expressions.   Please note that Sloth does not list the files used by itself or the 'lsof' command it spawns.  

The "Reveal" button tries to reveal the currently selected files in the Finder.  The "Kill" button sends a SIGTERM signal to the application using the currently selected files and updates the file list.  It is possible to change the kill signal to SIGKILL in Preferences.

Another option of interest is "Relaunch as root", which upon authentication will relaunch the Sloth program as the 'root' user.  This will enabled Sloth to display everything that is open on the system.


How does Sloth work?

Sloth is basically just a graphical interface front-end to the 'lsof'. 'lsof' is a very powerful tool supporting a great many options. See lsof(8) man page for details.  An 'lsof' task is spawned by using the NSTask class and  the piped output is parsed.  You can define an arbitrary lsof binary in Preferences, and get info about the version Sloth is using.



Todo list

    * Fix bug w. column sorting on refresh
    * Implement copying of rows



Version history


08/07/2010 - Version 1.5
        * Column sorting, column rearrangement
        * Several bug fixes
        * Copy/Drag and drop

29/05/2009 - Version 1.4
        * Regular expression search filtering
        * New "Relaunch as root" option
        * Fixed bug w. Mac OS X 10.5
        * Now built for Mac OS X 10.4 or later

28/07/2006 - Version 1.3.1
		* Released as Universal Binary

05/03/2004 - Version 1.3
		* Live update on search filter
		* Sorting in columns now works
		* Performance improvements
		* The timed update feature is non-functional for the time being
		* Lots of code replaced by Cocoa bindings thanks to Bill Bumgarner
		

27/02/2004 - Version 1.2
		* Filter search field now counts all list fields when filtering
		* Auto-refresh timer option
		* Preferences for setting arbitrary lsof binary and kill signal type
		* New application icon
		* Added Icelandic and Japanese localizations
	

22/02/2004 - Version 1.1
		* There is now a search field filter for entries in list. No type-in update.
		* "Actions" menu with menu items and shortcuts for button actions

21/02/2004 - Version 1.0 released


