STRACE
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 2020-02-04
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NAME
strace - trace system calls and signals
SYNOPSIS
[ -ACdffhikqqrtttTvVwxxyyzZ ]
[ -I n ]
[ -b execve ]
[-e expr]...
[ -a column ]
[ -o file ]
[ -s strsize ]
[ -X format ]
[-P path]...
[-p pid]...
[ --seccomp-bpf ]
{
-p pid
|
[ -DDD ]
[-E var[=val]]...
[ -u username ]
command [args]
}
-c
[ -dfwzZ ]
[ -I n ]
[ -b execve ]
[-e expr]...
[ -O overhead ]
[ -S sortby ]
[-P path]...
[-p pid]...
[ --seccomp-bpf ]
{
-p pid
|
[ -DDD ]
[-E var[=val]]...
[ -u username ]
command [args]
}
DESCRIPTION
In the simplest case
strace
runs the specified
command
until it exits.
It intercepts and records the system calls which are called
by a process and the signals which are received by a process.
The name of each system call, its arguments and its return value
are printed on standard error or to the file specified with the
-o
option.
strace
is a useful diagnostic, instructional, and debugging tool.
System administrators, diagnosticians and trouble-shooters will find
it invaluable for solving problems with
programs for which the source is not readily available since
they do not need to be recompiled in order to trace them.
Students, hackers and the overly-curious will find that
a great deal can be learned about a system and its system calls by
tracing even ordinary programs. And programmers will find that
since system calls and signals are events that happen at the user/kernel
interface, a close examination of this boundary is very
useful for bug isolation, sanity checking and
attempting to capture race conditions.
Each line in the trace contains the system call name, followed
by its arguments in parentheses and its return value.
An example from stracing the command "cat /dev/null" is:
open("/dev/null", O_RDONLY) = 3
Errors (typically a return value of -1) have the errno symbol
and error string appended.
open("/foo/bar", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
Signals are printed as signal symbol and decoded siginfo structure.
An excerpt from stracing and interrupting the command "sleep 666" is:
sigsuspend([] <unfinished ...>
--- SIGINT {si_signo=SIGINT, si_code=SI_USER, si_pid=...} ---
+++ killed by SIGINT +++
If a system call is being executed and meanwhile another one is being called
from a different thread/process then
strace
will try to preserve the order of those events and mark the ongoing call as
being
unfinished.
When the call returns it will be marked as
resumed.
[pid 28772] select(4, [3], NULL, NULL, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 28779] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1130322148, 939977000}) = 0
[pid 28772] <... select resumed> ) = 1 (in [3])
Interruption of a (restartable) system call by a signal delivery is processed
differently as kernel terminates the system call and also arranges its
immediate reexecution after the signal handler completes.
read(0, 0x7ffff72cf5cf, 1) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGALRM ... ---
rt_sigreturn(0xe) = 0
read(0, "", 1) = 0
Arguments are printed in symbolic form with passion.
This example shows the shell performing ">>xyzzy" output redirection:
open("xyzzy", O_WRONLY|O_APPEND|O_CREAT, 0666) = 3
Here, the third argument of
open(2)
is decoded by breaking down the
flag argument into its three bitwise-OR constituents and printing the
mode value in octal by tradition. Where the traditional or native
usage differs from ANSI or POSIX, the latter forms are preferred.
In some cases,
strace
output is proven to be more readable than the source.
Structure pointers are dereferenced and the members are displayed
as appropriate. In most cases, arguments are formatted in the most C-like
fashion possible.
For example, the essence of the command "ls -l /dev/null" is captured as:
lstat("/dev/null", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0666, st_rdev=makedev(0x1, 0x3), ...}) = 0
Notice how the 'struct stat' argument is dereferenced and how each member is
displayed symbolically. In particular, observe how the
st_mode
member is carefully decoded into a bitwise-OR of symbolic and numeric values.
Also notice in this example that the first argument to
lstat(2)
is an input to the system call and the second argument is an output.
Since output arguments are not modified if the system call fails, arguments may
not always be dereferenced. For example, retrying the "ls -l" example
with a non-existent file produces the following line:
lstat("/foo/bar", 0xb004) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
In this case the porch light is on but nobody is home.
Syscalls unknown to
strace
are printed raw, with the unknown system call number printed in hexadecimal form
and prefixed with "syscall_":
syscall_0xbad(0x1, 0x2, 0x3, 0x4, 0x5, 0x6) = -1 ENOSYS (Function not implemented)
Character pointers are dereferenced and printed as C strings.
Non-printing characters in strings are normally represented by
ordinary C escape codes.
Only the first
strsize
(32 by default) bytes of strings are printed;
longer strings have an ellipsis appended following the closing quote.
Here is a line from "ls -l" where the
getpwuid(3)
library routine is reading the password file:
read(3, "root::0:0:System Administrator:/"..., 1024) = 422
While structures are annotated using curly braces, simple pointers
and arrays are printed using square brackets with commas separating
elements. Here is an example from the command
id(1)
on a system with supplementary group ids:
getgroups(32, [100, 0]) = 2
On the other hand, bit-sets are also shown using square brackets,
but set elements are separated only by a space.
Here is the shell, preparing to execute an external command:
sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD TTOU], []) = 0
Here, the second argument is a bit-set of two signals,
SIGCHLD and SIGTTOU.
In some cases, the bit-set is so full that printing out the unset
elements is more valuable. In that case, the bit-set is prefixed by
a tilde like this:
sigprocmask(SIG_UNBLOCK, ~[], NULL) = 0
Here, the second argument represents the full set of all signals.
OPTIONS
General
- -e expr
-
A qualifying expression which modifies which events to trace
or how to trace them. The format of the expression is:
-
-
[,qualifier/=][!],value/[,,value/]...
-
where
qualifier
is one of
trace,
abbrev,
verbose,
raw,
signal,
read,
write,
fault,
inject,
status,
or
kvm,
and
value
is a qualifier-dependent symbol or number. The default
qualifier is
trace.
Using an exclamation mark negates the set of values. For example,
-e open
means literally
-e trace=open
which in turn means trace only the
open
system call. By contrast,
-e trace=!open
means to trace every system call except
open.
In addition, the special values
all
and
none
have the obvious meanings.
-
Note that some shells use the exclamation point for history
expansion even inside quoted arguments. If so, you must escape
the exclamation point with a backslash.
Startup
- -E var=,val
-
--env=var=val
Run command with
var=val
in its list of environment variables.
- -E var
-
--env=var
Remove
var
from the inherited list of environment variables before passing it on to
the command.
- -p pid
-
--attach=pid
Attach to the process with the process
ID
pid
and begin tracing.
The trace may be terminated
at any time by a keyboard interrupt signal
(CTRL-C).
strace
will respond by detaching itself from the traced process(es)
leaving it (them) to continue running.
Multiple
-p
options can be used to attach to many processes in addition to
command
(which is optional if at least one
-p
option is given).
-p
"`pidof PROG`" syntax is supported.
- -u username
-
--user=username
Run command with the user ID, group ID, and
supplementary groups of
username.
This option is only useful when running as root and enables the
correct execution of setuid and/or setgid binaries.
Unless this option is used setuid and setgid programs are executed
without effective privileges.
Tracing
- -b syscall
-
--detach-on=syscall
If specified syscall is reached, detach from traced process.
Currently, only
execve(2)
syscall is supported. This option is useful if you want to trace
multi-threaded process and therefore require
-f,
but don't want to trace its (potentially very complex) children.
- -D
-
Run tracer process as a grandchild, not as the parent of the
tracee. This reduces the visible effect of
strace
by keeping the tracee a direct child of the calling process.
- -DD
-
Run tracer process as tracee's grandchild in a separate process group.
In addition to reduction of the visible effect of
strace,
it also avoids killing of
strace
with
kill(2)
issued to the whole process group.
- -DDD
-
Run tracer process as tracee's grandchild in a separate session
("true daemonisation").
In addition to reduction of the visible effect of
strace,
it also avoids killing of
strace
upon session termination.
- -f
-
Trace child processes as they are created by currently traced
processes as a result of the
fork(2),
vfork(2)
and
clone(2)
system calls. Note that
-p
PID
-f
will attach all threads of process
PID
if it is multi-threaded, not only thread with
thread_id = PID.
- -ff
-
If the
-o
filename
option is in effect, each processes trace is written to
filename.pid
where
pid
is the numeric process id of each process.
This is incompatible with
-c,
since no per-process counts are kept.
-
One might want to consider using
strace-log-merge(1)
to obtain a combined strace log view.
- -I interruptible
-
When
strace
can be interrupted by signals (such as pressing
CTRL-C).
-
- 1
-
no signals are blocked;
2
fatal signals are blocked while decoding syscall (default);
3
fatal signals are always blocked (default if
-o FILE PROG);
4
fatal signals and
SIGTSTP (CTRL-Z)
are always blocked (useful to make
strace -o FILE PROG
not stop on
CTRL-Z,
default if
-D).
Filtering
- -e trace=,syscall_set
-
--trace=,syscall_set
Trace only the specified set of system calls.
syscall_set
is defined as
[!],value[,,value/],
and
value
can be one of the following:
-
- syscall
-
Trace specific syscall, specified by its name (but see
NOTES).
- ?value
-
Question mark before the syscall qualification allows suppression of error
in case no syscalls matched the qualification provided.
- /regex
-
Trace only those system calls that match the
regex.
You can use
POSIX
Extended Regular Expression syntax (see
regex(7)).
- syscall@64
-
Trace
syscall
only for the 64-bit personality.
- syscall@32
-
Trace
syscall
only for the 32-bit personality.
- syscall@x32
-
Trace
syscall
only for the 32-on-64-bit personality.
- %file
-
file
Trace all system calls which take a file name as an argument. You
can think of this as an abbreviation for
-e trace=open,stat,chmod,unlink,...
which is useful to seeing what files the process is referencing.
Furthermore, using the abbreviation will ensure that you don't
accidentally forget to include a call like
lstat(2)
in the list. Betchya woulda forgot that one.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=file")
is deprecated.
- %process
-
process
Trace all system calls which involve process management. This
is useful for watching the fork, wait, and exec steps of a process.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=process")
is deprecated.
- %net
-
%network
network
Trace all the network related system calls.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=network")
is deprecated.
- %signal
-
signal
Trace all signal related system calls.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=signal")
is deprecated.
- %ipc
-
ipc
Trace all IPC related system calls.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=ipc")
is deprecated.
- %desc
-
desc
Trace all file descriptor related system calls.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=desc")
is deprecated.
- %memory
-
memory
Trace all memory mapping related system calls.
The syntax without a preceding percent sign
("-e trace=memory")
is deprecated.
- %creds
-
Trace system calls that read or modify user and group identifiers or capability sets.
- %stat
-
Trace stat syscall variants.
- %lstat
-
Trace lstat syscall variants.
- %fstat
-
Trace fstat and fstatat syscall variants.
- %%stat
-
Trace syscalls used for requesting file status (stat, lstat, fstat, fstatat,
statx, and their variants).
- %statfs
-
Trace statfs, statfs64, statvfs, osf_statfs, and osf_statfs64 system calls.
The same effect can be achieved with
-e trace=/^(.*_)?statv?fs
regular expression.
- %fstatfs
-
Trace fstatfs, fstatfs64, fstatvfs, osf_fstatfs, and osf_fstatfs64 system calls.
The same effect can be achieved with
-e trace=/fstatv?fs
regular expression.
- %%statfs
-
Trace syscalls related to file system statistics (statfs-like, fstatfs-like,
and ustat). The same effect can be achieved with
-e trace=/statv?fs|fsstat|ustat
regular expression.
- %pure
-
Trace syscalls that always succeed and have no arguments.
Currently, this list includes
getegid32(2),
getgid32(2),
getppid(2),
get_thread_area(2)
(on architectures other than x86),
getuid32(2),
kern_features(2), and
metag_get_tls(2)
syscalls.
-
The
-c
option is useful for determining which system calls might be useful
to trace. For example,
trace=open,close,read,write
means to only
trace those four system calls. Be careful when making inferences
about the user/kernel boundary if only a subset of system calls
are being monitored. The default is
trace=all.
- -e signal=,set
-
--signal=,set
Trace only the specified subset of signals. The default is
signal=all.
For example,
signal=!SIGIO
(or
signal=!io)
causes
SIGIO
signals not to be traced.
- -e status=,set
-
--status=,set
Print only system calls with the specified return status. The default is
status=all.
When using the
status
qualifier, because
strace
waits for system calls to return before deciding whether they should be printed
or not, the traditional order of events may not be preserved anymore. If two
system calls are executed by concurrent threads,
strace
will first print both the entry and exit of the first system call to exit,
regardless of their respective entry time. The entry and exit of the second
system call to exit will be printed afterwards. Here is an example when
select(2)
is called, but a different thread calls
clock_gettime(2)
before
select(2)
finishes:
[pid 28779] 1130322148.939977 clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1130322148, 939977000}) = 0
[pid 28772] 1130322148.438139 select(4, [3], NULL, NULL, NULL) = 1 (in [3])
set
can include the following elements:
-
- successful
-
Trace system calls that returned without an error code.
The
-z
option has the effect of
status=successful.
failed
Trace system calls that returned with an error code.
The
-Z
option has the effect of
status=failed.
unfinished
Trace system calls that did not return. This might happen, for example, due to
an execve call in a neighbour thread.
unavailable
Trace system calls that returned but strace failed to fetch the error status.
detached
Trace system calls for which strace detached before the return.
- -P path
-
--trace-path=path
Trace only system calls accessing
path.
Multiple
-P
options can be used to specify several paths.
- -z
-
Print only syscalls that returned without an error code.
- -Z
-
Print only syscalls that returned with an error code.
Output format
- -a column
-
--columns=column
Align return values in a specific column (default column 40).
- -e abbrev=,syscall_set
-
--abbrev=,syscall_set
Abbreviate the output from printing each member of large structures.
The syntax of the
syscall_set
specification is the same as in the
-e trace
option.
The default is
abbrev=all.
The
-v
option has the effect of
abbrev=none.
- -e verbose=,syscall_set
-
--verbose=,syscall_set
Dereference structures for the specified set of system calls.
The syntax of the
syscall_set
specification is the same as in the
-e trace
option.
The default is
verbose=all.
- -e raw=,syscall_set
-
--raw=,syscall_set
Print raw, undecoded arguments for the specified set of system calls.
The syntax of the
syscall_set
specification is the same as in the
-e trace
option.
This option has the effect of causing all arguments to be printed
in hexadecimal. This is mostly useful if you don't trust the
decoding or you need to know the actual numeric value of an
argument.
See also
-X raw
option.
- -e read=,set
-
--read=,set
Perform a full hexadecimal and ASCII dump of all the data read from
file descriptors listed in the specified set. For example, to see
all input activity on file descriptors
3
and
5
use
-e read=,3,5.
Note that this is independent from the normal tracing of the
read(2)
system call which is controlled by the option
-e trace=read.
- -e write=,set
-
--write=,set
Perform a full hexadecimal and ASCII dump of all the data written to
file descriptors listed in the specified set. For example, to see
all output activity on file descriptors
3
and
5
use
-e write=,3,,5.
Note that this is independent from the normal tracing of the
write(2)
system call which is controlled by the option
-e trace=write.
- -e kvm=vcpu
-
--kvm=vcpu
Print the exit reason of kvm vcpu. Requires Linux kernel version 4.16.0
or higher.
- -i
-
--instruction-pointer
Print the instruction pointer at the time of the system call.
- -k
-
--stack-traces
Print the execution stack trace of the traced
processes after each system call.
- -o filename
-
--output=filename
Write the trace output to the file
filename
rather than to stderr.
filename.pid
form is used if
-ff
option is supplied.
If the argument begins with '|' or '!', the rest of the
argument is treated as a command and all output is piped to it.
This is convenient for piping the debugging output to a program
without affecting the redirections of executed programs.
The latter is not compatible with
-ff
option currently.
- -A
-
--output-append-mode
Open the file provided in the
-o
option in append mode.
- -q
-
Suppress messages about attaching, detaching etc. This happens
automatically when output is redirected to a file and the command
is run directly instead of attaching.
- -qq
-
If given twice, suppress messages about process exit status.
- -r
-
Print a relative timestamp upon entry to each system call. This
records the time difference between the beginning of successive
system calls.
Note that since
-r
option uses the monotonic clock time for measuring time difference and not the
wall clock time, its measurements can differ from the difference in time
reported by the
-t
option.
- -s strsize
-
--string-limit=strsize
Specify the maximum string size to print (the default is 32). Note
that filenames are not considered strings and are always printed in
full.
- -t
-
Prefix each line of the trace with the wall clock time.
- -tt
-
If given twice, the time printed will include the microseconds.
- -ttt
-
If given thrice, the time printed will include the microseconds
and the leading portion will be printed as the number
of seconds since the epoch.
- -T
-
Show the time spent in system calls. This records the time
difference between the beginning and the end of each system call.
- -v
-
--no-abbrev
Print unabbreviated versions of environment, stat, termios, etc.
calls. These structures are very common in calls and so the default
behavior displays a reasonable subset of structure members. Use
this option to get all of the gory details.
- -x
-
Print all non-ASCII strings in hexadecimal string format.
- -xx
-
Print all strings in hexadecimal string format.
- -X format
-
--const-print-style=format
Set the format for printing of named constants and flags.
Supported
format
values are:
-
- raw
-
Raw number output, without decoding.
abbrev
Output a named constant or a set of flags instead of the raw number if they are
found.
This is the default
strace
behaviour.
verbose
Output both the raw value and the decoded string (as a comment).
- -y
-
Print paths associated with file descriptor arguments.
- -yy
-
Print protocol specific information associated with socket file descriptors,
and block/character device number associated with device file descriptors.
Statistics
- -c
-
--summary-only
Count time, calls, and errors for each system call and report a summary on
program exit, suppressing the regular output.
This attempts to show system time (CPU time spent running
in the kernel) independent of wall clock time. If
-c
is used with
-f,
only aggregate totals for all traced processes are kept.
- -C
-
--summary
Like
-c
but also print regular output while processes are running.
- -O overhead
-
Set the overhead for tracing system calls to
overhead.
This is useful for overriding the default heuristic for guessing
how much time is spent in mere measuring when timing system calls using
the
-c
option. The accuracy of the heuristic can be gauged by timing a given
program run without tracing (using
time(1))
and comparing the accumulated
system call time to the total produced using
-c.
-
The format of
overhead
specification is described in section
Time specification format description.
- -S sortby
-
--summary-sort-by=sortby
Sort the output of the histogram printed by the
-c
option by the specified criterion. Legal values are
time (or time_total or total_time),
calls (or count),
errors (or error),
name (or syscall or syscall_name),
and
nothing (or none);
default is
time.
- -w
-
--summary-wall-clock
Summarise the time difference between the beginning and end of
each system call. The default is to summarise the system time.
Tampering
- -e inject=,syscall_set/[:error=,errno/|:retval=,value/][:signal=,sig/][:syscall=syscall][:delay_enter=,delay/][:delay_exit=,delay/][:when=,expr/]
-
--inject=,syscall_set/[:error=,errno/|:retval=,value/][:signal=,sig/][:syscall=syscall][:delay_enter=,delay/][:delay_exit=,delay/][:when=,expr/]
Perform syscall tampering for the specified set of syscalls.
The syntax of the
syscall_set
specification is the same as in the
-e trace
option.
-
At least one of
error,
retval,
signal,
delay_enter,
or
delay_exit
options has to be specified.
error
and
retval
are mutually exclusive.
-
If :error=,errno/ option is specified,
a fault is injected into a syscall invocation:
the syscall number is replaced by -1 which corresponds to an invalid syscall
(unless a syscall is specified with :syscall= option),
and the error code is specified using a symbolic
errno
value like
ENOSYS
or a numeric value within 1..4095 range.
-
If :retval=,value/ option is specified,
success injection is performed: the syscall number is replaced by -1,
but a bogus success value is returned to the callee.
-
If :signal=,sig/ option is specified with either a symbolic value
like
SIGSEGV
or a numeric value within 1..SIGRTMAX range,
that signal is delivered on entering every syscall specified by the
set.
-
If :delay_enter=,delay/ or :delay_exit=,delay/
options are specified, delay injection is performed: the tracee is delayed
by time period specified by
delay
on entering or exiting the syscall, respectively.
The format of
delay
specification is described in section
Time specification format description.
-
If :signal=,sig/ option is specified without
:error=,errno/, :retval=,value/ or
:delay_{enter,exit}=,usecs/ options,
then only a signal
sig
is delivered without a syscall fault or delay injection.
Conversely, :error=,errno/ or
:retval=,value/ option without
:delay_enter=,delay/,
:delay_exit=,delay/ or
:signal=,sig/ options injects a fault without delivering a signal
or injecting a delay, etc.
-
If both :error=,errno/ or :retval=,value/
and :signal=,sig/ options are specified, then both
a fault or success is injected and a signal is delivered.
-
if :syscall=syscall option is specified, the corresponding syscall
with no side effects is injected instead of -1.
Currently, only "pure" (see
-e trace=%pure
description) syscalls can be specified there.
-
Unless a :when=,expr subexpression is specified,
an injection is being made into every invocation of each syscall from the
set.
-
The format of the subexpression is one of the following:
-
- first
-
For every syscall from the
set,
perform an injection for the syscall invocation number
first
only.
first/+
For every syscall from the
set,
perform injections for the syscall invocation number
first
and all subsequent invocations.
first/+step
For every syscall from the
set,
perform injections for syscall invocations number
first,
first+step,
first+step+step,
and so on.
-
For example, to fail each third and subsequent chdir syscalls with
ENOENT,
use
-e inject=,chdir/:error=,ENOENT/:when=,3/+.
-
The valid range for numbers
first
and
step
is 1..65535.
-
An injection expression can contain only one
error=
or
retval=
specification, and only one
signal=
specification. If an injection expression contains multiple
when=
specifications, the last one takes precedence.
-
Accounting of syscalls that are subject to injection
is done per syscall and per tracee.
-
Specification of syscall injection can be combined
with other syscall filtering options, for example,
-P /dev/urandom -e inject=,file/:error=,ENOENT.
- -e fault=,syscall_set/[:error=,errno/][:when=,expr/]
-
--fault=,syscall_set/[:error=,errno/][:when=,expr/]
Perform syscall fault injection for the specified set of syscalls.
-
This is equivalent to more generic
-e inject= expression with default value of
errno
option set to
ENOSYS.
Miscellaneous
- -d
-
--debug
Show some debugging output of
strace
itself on the standard error.
- -F
-
This option is deprecated. It is retained for backward compatibility only
and may be removed in future releases.
Usage of multiple instances of
-F
option is still equivalent to a single
-f,
and it is ignored at all if used along with one or more instances of
-f
option.
- -h
-
--help
Print the help summary.
- --seccomp-bpf
-
Enable (experimental) usage of seccomp-bpf (see
seccomp(2))
to have
ptrace(2)-stops
only when system calls that are being traced occur in the traced processes.
Implies the
-f
option.
An attempt to rely on seccomp-bpf to filter system calls may fail for various
reasons, e.g. there are too many system calls to filter, the seccomp API is not
available, or
strace
itself is being traced.
--seccomp-bpf
is also ineffective on processes attached using
-p.
In cases when seccomp-bpf filter setup failed,
strace
proceeds as usual and stops traced processes on every system call.
- -V
-
--version
Print the version number of
strace.
Time specification format description
Time values can be specified as a decimal floating point number
(in a format accepted by
strtod(3)),
optionally followed by one of the following suffices that specify
the unit of time:
s
(seconds),
ms
(milliseconds),
us
(microseconds), or
ns
(nanoseconds).
If no suffix is specified, the value is interpreted as microseconds.
The described format is used for
-O, -e inject=delay_enter, and -e inject=delay_exit
options.
DIAGNOSTICS
When
command
exits,
strace
exits with the same exit status.
If
command
is terminated by a signal,
strace
terminates itself with the same signal, so that
strace
can be used as a wrapper process transparent to the invoking parent process.
Note that parent-child relationship (signal stop notifications,
getppid(2)
value, etc) between traced process and its parent are not preserved
unless
-D
is used.
When using
-p
without a
command,
the exit status of
strace
is zero unless no processes has been attached or there was an unexpected error
in doing the tracing.
SETUID INSTALLATION
If
strace
is installed setuid to root then the invoking user will be able to
attach to and trace processes owned by any user.
In addition setuid and setgid programs will be executed and traced
with the correct effective privileges.
Since only users trusted with full root privileges should be allowed
to do these things,
it only makes sense to install
strace
as setuid to root when the users who can execute it are restricted
to those users who have this trust.
For example, it makes sense to install a special version of
strace
with mode 'rwsr-xr--', user
root
and group
trace,
where members of the
trace
group are trusted users.
If you do use this feature, please remember to install
a regular non-setuid version of
strace
for ordinary users to use.
MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES SUPPORT
On some architectures,
strace
supports decoding of syscalls for processes that use different ABI rather than
the one
strace
uses.
Specifically, in addition to decoding native ABI,
strace
can decode the following ABIs on the following architectures:
Architecture | ABIs supported
|
x86_64 | i386, x32 [1]; i386 [2]
|
AArch64 | ARM 32-bit EABI
|
PowerPC 64-bit [3] | PowerPC 32-bit
|
s390x | s390
|
SPARC 64-bit | SPARC 32-bit
|
TILE 64-bit | TILE 32-bit
|
-
- [1]
-
When
strace
is built as an x86_64 application
[2]
When
strace
is built as an x32 application
[3]
Big endian only
This support is optional and relies on ability to generate and parse structure
definitions during the build time.
Please refer to the output of the
strace -V
command in order to figure out what support is available in your
strace
build ("non-native" refers to an ABI that differs from the ABI
strace
has):
- m32-mpers
-
strace
can trace and properly decode non-native 32-bit binaries.
no-m32-mpers
strace
can trace, but cannot properly decode non-native 32-bit binaries.
mx32-mpers
strace
can trace and properly decode non-native 32-on-64-bit binaries.
no-mx32-mpers
strace
can trace, but cannot properly decode non-native 32-on-64-bit binaries.
If the output contains neither
m32-mpers
nor
no-m32-mpers,
then decoding of non-native 32-bit binaries is not implemented at all
or not applicable.
Likewise, if the output contains neither
mx32-mpers
nor
no-mx32-mpers,
then decoding of non-native 32-on-64-bit binaries is not implemented at all
or not applicable.
NOTES
It is a pity that so much tracing clutter is produced by systems
employing shared libraries.
It is instructive to think about system call inputs and outputs
as data-flow across the user/kernel boundary. Because user-space
and kernel-space are separate and address-protected, it is
sometimes possible to make deductive inferences about process
behavior using inputs and outputs as propositions.
In some cases, a system call will differ from the documented behavior
or have a different name. For example, the
faccessat(2)
system call does not have
flags
argument, and the
setrlimit(2)
library function uses
prlimit64(2)
system call on modern (2.6.38+) kernels. These
discrepancies are normal but idiosyncratic characteristics of the
system call interface and are accounted for by C library wrapper
functions.
Some system calls have different names in different architectures and
personalities. In these cases, system call filtering and printing
uses the names that match corresponding
__NR_*
kernel macros of the tracee's architecture and personality.
There are two exceptions from this general rule:
arm_fadvise64_64(2)
ARM syscall and
xtensa_fadvise64_64(2)
Xtensa syscall are filtered and printed as
fadvise64_64(2).
On x32, syscalls that are intended to be used by 64-bit processes and not x32
ones (for example,
readv(2),
that has syscall number 19 on x86_64, with its x32 counterpart has syscall
number 515), but called with
__X32_SYSCALL_BIT
flag being set, are designated with
#64
suffix.
On some platforms a process that is attached to with the
-p
option may observe a spurious
EINTR
return from the current system call that is not restartable.
(Ideally, all system calls should be restarted on
strace
attach, making the attach invisible
to the traced process, but a few system calls aren't.
Arguably, every instance of such behavior is a kernel bug.)
This may have an unpredictable effect on the process
if the process takes no action to restart the system call.
As
strace
executes the specified
command
directly and does not employ a shell for that, scripts without shebang
that usually run just fine when invoked by shell fail to execute with
ENOEXEC
error.
It is advisable to manually supply a shell as a
command
with the script as its argument.
BUGS
Programs that use the
setuid
bit do not have
effective user
ID
privileges while being traced.
A traced process runs slowly.
Traced processes which are descended from
command
may be left running after an interrupt signal
(CTRL-C).
HISTORY
The original
strace
was written by Paul Kranenburg
for SunOS and was inspired by its
trace
utility.
The SunOS version of
strace
was ported to Linux and enhanced
by Branko Lankester, who also wrote the Linux kernel support.
Even though Paul released
strace
2.5 in 1992,
Branko's work was based on Paul's
strace
1.5 release from 1991.
In 1993, Rick Sladkey merged
strace
2.5 for SunOS and the second release of
strace
for Linux, added many of the features of
truss(1)
from SVR4, and produced an
strace
that worked on both platforms. In 1994 Rick ported
strace
to SVR4 and Solaris and wrote the
automatic configuration support. In 1995 he ported
strace
to Irix
and tired of writing about himself in the third person.
Beginning with 1996,
strace
was maintained by Wichert Akkerman.
During his tenure,
strace
development migrated to CVS; ports to FreeBSD and many architectures on Linux
(including ARM, IA-64, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC, s390, SPARC) were introduced.
In 2002, the burden of
strace
maintainership was transferred to Roland McGrath.
Since then,
strace
gained support for several new Linux architectures (AMD64, s390x, SuperH),
bi-architecture support for some of them, and received numerous additions and
improvements in syscalls decoders on Linux;
strace
development migrated to
git
during that period.
Since 2009,
strace
is actively maintained by Dmitry Levin.
strace
gained support for AArch64, ARC, AVR32, Blackfin, Meta, Nios II, OpenSISC 1000,
RISC-V, Tile/TileGx, Xtensa architectures since that time.
In 2012, unmaintained and apparently broken support for non-Linux operating
systems was removed.
Also, in 2012
strace
gained support for path tracing and file descriptor path decoding.
In 2014, support for stack traces printing was added.
In 2016, syscall fault injection was implemented.
For the additional information, please refer to the
NEWS
file and
strace
repository commit log.
REPORTING BUGS
Problems with
strace
should be reported to the
strace
mailing list
SEE ALSO
strace-log-merge(1),
ltrace(1),
perf-trace(1),
trace-cmd(1),
time(1),
ptrace(2),
proc(5)
strace
Home Page
AUTHORS
The complete list of
strace
contributors can be found in the
CREDITS
file.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- General
-
- Startup
-
- Tracing
-
- Filtering
-
- Output format
-
- Statistics
-
- Tampering
-
- Miscellaneous
-
- Time specification format description
-
- DIAGNOSTICS
-
- SETUID INSTALLATION
-
- MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES SUPPORT
-
- NOTES
-
- BUGS
-
- HISTORY
-
- REPORTING BUGS
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AUTHORS
-
This document was created by
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Time: 08:55:09 GMT, December 16, 2021