Tracing system calls: "strace"


"strace" is a very good tool for diagnosing programs
To look for configuration files
To see how child processes are called
To understand how a network connection is made
To diagnose an unclear error message
To see where the program is spending its time

Strace is just a user of ptrace(2)

Examples:
strace -f -e execve -p `pidof inetd`
strace -f -e open,stat /etc/init.d/dhcp start
strace -tf -o /tmp/trace application args