STRACE(1) STRACE(1)
NAME
strace - trace system calls and signals
SYNOPSIS
strace [ -dffhiqrtttTvxx ] [ -acolumn ] [ -eexpr ] ... [ -ofile ] [ -ppid ] ... [ -sstrsize ] [ -uusername ]
[ -Evar=val ] ... [ -Evar ] ... [ command [ arg ... ] ]
strace -c [ -eexpr ] ... [ -Ooverhead ] [ -Ssortby ] [ command [ arg ... ] ]
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 a signal symbol and a signal string. An excerpt from stracing and interrupting the com-
mand ‘‘sleep 666’’ is:
sigsuspend([] <unfinished ...>
--- SIGINT (Interrupt) ---
+++ killed by SIGINT +++
Arguments are printed in symbolic form with a passion. This example shows the shell performing ‘‘>>xyzzy’’
output redirection:
open("xyzzy", O_WRONLY|O_APPEND|O_CREAT, 0666) = 3
Here the three argument form of open is decoded by breaking down the flag argument into its three bitwise-OR
constituents and printing the mode value in octal by tradition. Where traditional or native usage differs from
ANSI or POSIX, the latter forms are preferred. In some cases, strace output has proven to be more readable
than the source.
Structure pointers are dereferenced and the members are displayed as appropriate. In all 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(1, 3), ...}) = 0
Notice how the ‘struct stat’ argument is dereferenced and how each member is displayed symbolically. In par-
ticular, 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 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 fol-
lowing line:
lstat("/foo/bar", 0xb004) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
In this case the porch light is on but nobody is home.
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 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’’ 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
-c Count time, calls, and errors for each system call and report a summary on program exit. On
Linux, this attempts to show system time (CPU time spent running in the kernel) independent
of wall clock time.
strace -c -p 555
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
% time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
nan 0.000000 0 48 read
nan 0.000000 0 141 ioctl
nan 0.000000 0 2 setitimer
nan 0.000000 0 2 2 sigreturn
nan 0.000000 0 51 2 poll
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00 0.000000 244 4 total
-d Show some debugging output of strace itself on the standard error.
-f Trace child processes as they are created by currently traced processes as a result of the
fork(2) system call. The new process is attached to as soon as its pid is known (through
the return value of fork(2) in the parent process). This means that such children may run
uncontrolled for a while (especially in the case of a vfork(2)), until the parent is sched-
uled again to complete its (v)fork(2) call. If the parent process decides to wait(2) for a
child that is currently being traced, it is suspended until an appropriate child process
either terminates or incurs a signal that would cause it to terminate (as determined from
the child’s current signal disposition).
-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.
-F Attempt to follow vforks. (On SunOS 4.x, this is accomplished with some dynamic linking
trickery.) Otherwise, vforks will not be followed even if -f has been given.
-h Print the help summary.
-i Print the instruction pointer at the time of the system call.
-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.
-r Print a relative timestamp upon entry to each system call. This records the time difference
between the beginning of successive system calls.
# strace -p 555 -r
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
0.000000 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
0.001174 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
0.001161 poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1
0.153307 read(12, "\7\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\356\365\n\1\0\0\0\0\f\372y\0\0"..., 136) = 136
0.002980 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0
0.001676 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe97040c) = 0
0.001447 ioctl(12, 0x40044b14, 0x3ce28) = 0
-t Prefix each line of the trace with the time of day.
strace -p 555 -t
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
09:50:25 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
09:50:25 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
09:50:25 poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1
09:50:25 read(12, "\7\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\"\262\20\1\0\0\0\0\304:}\0\0\0"..., 136) = 136
09:50:25 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0
09:50:25 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe97040c) = 0
09:50:25 ioctl(12, 0x40044b14, 0x3ce28) = 0
-tt If given twice, the time printed will include the microseconds.
strace -p 555 -tt
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
09:50:46.462134 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
09:50:46.465769 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
09:50:46.467256 poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1
09:50:46.617210 read(12, "\7\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0>I\21\1\0\0\0\0\3628~\0\0\0\0\0"..., 136) = 136
09:50:46.620281 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0
09:50:46.622395 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe97040c) = 0
09:50:46.624289 ioctl(12, 0x40044b14, 0x3ce28) = 0
-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.
strace -p 555 -ttt
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
1222768294.783245 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
1222768294.784455 --- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
1222768294.785453 poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1
1222768294.857007 read(12, "\7\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0I\320\f\1\0\0\0\0k9{\0\0\0\0\0"..., 136) = 136
1222768294.859535 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0
1222768294.861090 ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe97040c) = 0
1222768294.862416 ioctl(12, 0x40044b14, 0x3ce28) = 0
-T Show the time spent in system calls. This records the time difference between the beginning
and the end of each system call.
strace -p 555 -T
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
--- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
--- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1 <0.029597>
read(12, "\7\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0Bu\16\1\0\0\0\0\202\266{\0\0\0"..., 136) = 136 <0.000364>
ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0 <0.000353>
ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe97040c) = 0 <0.000353>
ioctl(12, 0x40044b14, 0x3ce28) = 0 <0.000550>
-v 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 struc-
ture members. Use this option to get all of the gory details.
-V Print the version number of strace.
-x Print all non-ASCII strings in hexadecimal string format.
-xx Print all strings in hexadecimal string format.
-a column Align return values in a specific column (default column 40).
-e expr A qualifying expression which modifies which events to trace or how to trace them. The format of the expression is:
[qualifier=][!]value1[,value2]...
where qualifier is one of trace, abbrev, verbose, raw, signal, read, or write 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, -eopen means literally -e trace=open which in
turn means trace only the open system call. By contrast, -etrace=!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.
-e trace=set
Trace only the specified set of system calls. 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 trace=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 in the list. Betchya woulda forgot that
one.
-e trace=process
Trace all system calls which involve process management. This is useful for watching the
fork, wait, and exec steps of a process.
-e trace=network
Trace all the network related system calls.
-e trace=signal
Trace all signal related system calls.
-e trace=ipc
Trace all IPC related system calls.
-e trace=desc
Trace all file descriptor related system calls.
-e abbrev=set
Abbreviate the output from printing each member of large structures. The default is
abbrev=all. The -v option has the effect of abbrev=none.
-e verbose=set
Dereference structures for the specified set of system calls. The default is verbose=all.
-e raw=set Print raw, undecoded arguments for the specified set of system calls. 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.
# strace -p 555 -e raw=read
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1
read(0xc, 0xbe970588, 0x88) = 0x88
ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0
-e 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 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) sys-
tem call which is controlled by the option -e trace=read.
strace -p 555 -e read=12
Process 555 attached - interrupt to quit
--- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
--- SIGSTOP (Stopped (signal)) @ 0 (0) ---
poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI, revents=POLLIN}], 8, -1) = 1
read(12, "\7\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0j\312\f\1\0\0\0\0\202M{\0\0\0\0"..., 136) = 136
| 00000 07 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6a ca 0c 01 ........ ....j... |
| 00010 00 00 00 00 82 4d 7b 00 00 00 00 00 f4 81 38 00 .....M{. ......8. |
| 00020 00 00 00 00 5a 4b 0c 00 00 00 00 00 f5 f9 01 00 ....ZK.. ........ |
| 00030 13 00 00 00 c8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ ........ |
| 00040 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ ........ |
| 00050 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ ........ |
| 00060 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ ........ |
| 00070 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ ........ |
| 00080 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ |
ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe970424) = 0
ioctl(12, 0x80044b03, 0xbe97040c) = 0
ioctl(12, 0x40044b14, 0x3ce28) = 0
-e 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.
-o filename Write the trace output to the file filename rather than to stderr. Use filename.pid if -ff
is used. If the argument begins with ‘|’ or with ‘!’ then 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.
-O overhead Set the overhead for tracing system calls to overhead microseconds. 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.
-p pid Attach to the process with the process ID pid and begin tracing. The trace may be termi-
nated 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 up to 32 processes in addition to command (which is
optional if at least one -p option is given).
-s 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.
-S sortby Sort the output of the histogram printed by the -c option by the specified criterion. Legal
values are time, calls, name, and nothing (default time).
-u 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 set-
gid binaries. Unless this option is used setuid and setgid programs are executed without
effective privileges.
-E var=val Run command with var=val in its list of environment variables.
-E var Remove var from the inherited list of environment variables before passing it on to the com-
mand.
SETUID INSTALLATION
If strace is installed setuid to root then the invoking user will be able to attach to and trace pro-
cesses 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 non-setuid version of strace
for ordinary lusers to use.
SEE ALSO
ltrace(1), time(1), ptrace(2), proc(5)
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 pos-
sible 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, on System V-derived systems the true time(2) system call does not take an argument and the stat
function is called xstat and takes an extra leading argument. These discrepancies are normal but
idiosyncratic characteristics of the system call interface and are accounted for by C library wrapper
functions.
On some platforms a process that has a system call trace applied to it with the -p option will receive a
SIGSTOP. This signal may interrupt a system call that is not restartable. This may have an unpre-
dictable effect on the process if the process takes no action to restart the system call.
BUGS
Programs that use the setuid bit do not have effective user ID privileges while being traced.
A traced process ignores SIGSTOP except on SVR4 platforms.
A traced process which tries to block SIGTRAP will be sent a SIGSTOP in an attempt to force continuation
of tracing.
A traced process runs slowly.
Traced processes which are descended from command may be left running after an interrupt signal (CTRL-
C).
On Linux, exciting as it would be, tracing the init process is forbidden.
The -i option is weakly supported.
HISTORY
strace The original strace was written by Paul Kranenburg for SunOS and was inspired by its trace util-
ity. 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.
PROBLEMS
Problems with strace should be reported via the Debian Bug Tracking System, or to the strace mailing
list at <strace-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>.
2003-01-21 STRACE(1)
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