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strace#

What's strace?#

  • Trace calls to system calls, signals
  • Debug programs for which no source is available
  • Simple profiling

Profiling#

strace -wc ./a.out  # wall time

Use strace "in the wild"#

systemd#

Prepend the command: ExecStart=/usr/bin/strace /path/to/bin

Replace the binary1#

mv /usr/bin/something /usr/bin/something.real

cat <<EOF > /usr/bin/something
#!/usr/bin/env bash

strace "@!" 2>&1 | tee /tmp/something.log.$$
EOF

chmod +x /usr/bin/something

  1. h/t @rbarry82 ↩