How to display open file descriptors but not using lsof command

There are two reasons lsof | wc -l doesn't count file descriptors. One is that it lists things that aren't open files, such as loaded dynamically linked libraries and current working directories; you need to filter them out. Another is that lsof takes some time to run, so can miss files that are opened or closed while it's running; therefore the number of listed open files is approximate. Looking at /proc/sys/fs/file-nr gives you an exact value at a particular point in time.

cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr is only useful when you need the exact figure, mainly to check for resource exhaustion. If you want to list the open files, you need to call lsof, or use some equivalent method such as trawling /proc/*/fd manually.

Process information is kept dynamically by the system in directories under /proc. For example the process with PID 1234 will have a directory called /proc/1234.

There are quite a bit of information in there but right now you are interested in the /proc/1234/fd subdirectory.

NOTE: You need to have root permissions to view or open files for processes that you do not own, as well as for SetUID processes.

Example:

root@johan-HP-ProBook-6560b-LG654EA-ACQ:/proc# ls -l 2443/fd
total 0
lr-x------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 0 -> pipe:[13637]
l-wx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 1 -> /home/johan/.xsession-errors
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 10 -> anon_inode:[eventfd]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 11 -> anon_inode:[eventfd]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 12 -> socket:[39495]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 13 -> anon_inode:[eventfd]
lr-x------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 14 -> anon_inode:inotify
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 15 -> anon_inode:[eventfd]
l-wx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 16 -> pipe:[37885]
lr-x------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 17 -> pipe:[37886]
l-wx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 2 -> /home/johan/.xsession-errors
l-wx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 21 -> pipe:[167984]
lr-x------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 22 -> pipe:[167985]
l-wx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 23 -> pipe:[170009]
lr-x------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 24 -> pipe:[170010]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 3 -> anon_inode:[eventfd]
lr-x------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 4 -> pipe:[14726]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 5 -> socket:[14721]
l-wx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 6 -> pipe:[14726]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 7 -> socket:[14730]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 8 -> socket:[13984]
lrwx------ 1 johan johan 64 Feb 27 10:26 9 -> socket:[14767]

root@johan-HP:/proc# cat 2443/fdinfo/2
pos:    1244446
flags:  0102001

Also have a look at the rest of the files under /proc ... a lot of useful information from the system resides here.